


To The Morning Through The Shadows

by violentdarlings



Series: To The Morning Through The Shadows [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Canonical Character Death, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Elf Sex, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Mirkwood, Oral Sex, Parent Thranduil, Post-Battle of Five Armies, Tauriel is adorable, Tauriel is pretty messed up, Thranduil Not Being An Asshole, Thranduil has shit coping mechanisms, Touch-Starved, seriously loads of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-07 22:52:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 32,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3186188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Elven King may be incapable of love, but there is some small shred of mercy left. Even after her betrayal and banishment, Tauriel still manages to arouse Thranduil’s interest, and his compassion. Follows the path of Thranduil and Tauriel after the Battle of the Five Armies. Now complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To The Morning Through The Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> There isn't enough Tauriel/Thranduil in the world.

It begins when Tauriel visits him in the terrible silence of his halls. He does not bother to wonder who it was that allowed her passage into his realm. Such speculation is pointless, when he knows many of her former guards still harbour a soft spot for their former leader. And he does not fear her. How could he, even after she has held him at arrowpoint, when he has known her since she was but a child? He hears the drag of her feet on the stone, barely audible – a credit to her stealth – but for the keenness of his ears.

Thranduil is alone in the throne room when she approaches. Such solitude has become his wont of late. Never the most social of beings, this newfound seclusion has become less a habit and more an act of self-preservation. It has become his custom to settle onto his throne and brood, not that any would dare call it brooding. He has much to ruminate on. He had not noticed before how empty his halls truly are. Before, when there was a chance of seeing his son’s face in the corridors and passageways, when his wife’s child still looked at him with even a hint of respect and something approaching love.

“My lord,” Tauriel rasps. Thranduil leans back on his throne and examines the Silvan. He could tell from the first moment she appeared that she is not well, but up close her aspect is far more damning. The flawlessness of their kind aside, Tauriel is drawn and pale. Her eyes are bloodshot and he cannot tell whether sleeplessness or grief has reddened them. Deep in his heart, Thranduil cannot truly bring himself to consider either option as favourable in comparison to the other. And her hair, so uncommon for their kind, is lank and tangled, but that is not all. It is as though she has gathered hanks of it in her hands and hacked at the red tresses until they came away; what remains is ragged and uneven, no longer than her shoulder. Even in her time as guard captain, after long days and nights without sleep in defence of his realm, she had not looked so truly destroyed.

“You look wretched,” he informs her. Tauriel’s eyes narrow, but he cannot bring himself to regret his sharpness. He watches the tight lines of her throat work and wonders how long before she snaps at him. Truly, he relishes the thought of it. A quarrel with his erstwhile lieutenant would be infinitely preferable to the ennui which pervades his halls.

“I… regret my earlier insolence,” Tauriel says stiffly. “It was wrong of me to speak to you thusly.” Thranduil makes a low incredulous noise in spite of himself, and this he does regret. Tauriel’s spine straightens as though a hot wire has run through her body, her face hardening, and despite himself a deeply buried rage bubbles just a little to the surface.

“You regret your insolence,” he says icily. “Yet you do not regret the sentiments you expressed.”

“My lord –”

“State the truth.” The air in the throne room between them feels colder than the darkest depths of his dungeons. Yet Tauriel raises her chin and does not waver, and he might respect her a little more for that, were he of the mind to.

“I believe it was right to stand against you,” she says, her voice ringing with certainty. “Yet I rue the words I spoke in my haste and my ignorance. I,” and here she hesitates; he leans forward in spite of himself. “There is love in you. My lord. And I would –”

“You would?” he questions. Painfully, as though the gesture physically wounds her, Tauriel lowers herself onto her knees. She has come before him without accoutrement or weaponry: were he to draw his blade and slash the white length of her throat, she would be powerless to defend herself.

“I would offer some recompense. For my actions.” For a long time he considers her, kneeling on the hard stone. It must hurt her knees, but she does not falter, her eyes settled on the flagstones.

“Words are often said in the heat of battle without consideration or foundation in truth,” Thranduil says finally, and the former captain raises her eyes. It feels an imposition and an irreverence, that she can meet his eyes without the world falling asunder. Yet it would not be the first time he has seen the breaking of the world. If he could endure that, and the loss of infinite more besides, then to meet the leaf-green stare of Tauriel will not break him. “In the eyes of our people, you are disgraced. Yet your record of service to my realm before your banishment is untarnished. It is enough, I think, to warrant you a few weeks’ houseroom.”

 

Tauriel stays, and Thranduil watches her fall apart.

Her old quarters have been given to the new captain of the guard. His head of household finds a room for her; nothing as grand as her former appointments, but she does not seem to care. He grants her permission to carry her bow and her blades; he notes that she has been unable to find someone to make her a longbow like the one he had sliced in twain. Instead it is distinctively of dwarven make, and even as the members of his court sneer and snigger behind their hands, he finds it remarkable. She walks amongst them with her head held high and her eyes seeking something in the distance: more than once, words spring to his lips. He wants to know what Tauriel sees in the complexities of her grief. He wants to know what anguish is in her heart. Then, perhaps, he might find it easier to make sense of his own.

Thranduil does not have to wait long, not once his request to his artillator has been completed. He sweeps past guards and members of his court alike, descending into the heavy nadir of his dungeons. It would be unbefitting of him to seek her company, but he knows every inch of his palace. And truly, it was not so great a stretch to think he might find her here.

Tauriel is seated by a cell, body curved in on itself as to shield her very centre from a blow. His shadow falls across her and she makes no move, so absorbed is she in contemplation of the object she holds. Her dwarven bow, inscribed with their foolish secret language. Perhaps her dwarf lover taught her to read their tongue. Then again, perhaps not. He can hardly imagine Thorin Oakenshield allowing his nephew to sit beside an elf, heads bent over a sacred text. Then again, he imagines Thorin Oakenshield would have been more than a trifle put out to discover his sister-son’s affection for an elf, of all creatures.

The thought brings a thin smile to his lips. Thorin Oakenshield lies interred with Orcrist on his breast, yet such a rivalry is not easily forgotten. No, indeed it is not.

“My lord,” Tauriel greets him quietly, and Thranduil sets a hand on her shoulder. Such close contact would usually be anathema to him, but in the deep quiet of the dungeons and the ragged fall of her hair, it is as though the world has fallen away.

“An unusual weapon. Did it belong to - ?” he begins, but Tauriel is already shaking her head.

“No. It was – a gift, from the great treasure hoard. From the elder son of Fundin. He rather thought that Kíli would approve.” Kíli. As he is accustomed to all mention of Tauriel’s dwarf being nameless, it rather staggers him for a moment. It is unusual and a little uncomfortable, to consider that dwarrows can be as individual and singular as his own kin.

“To that, I cannot answer,” Thranduil says, and settles beside her on the stone. She glances up at him in surprise, and in mute response he places the new bow on her lap. “While I understand your attachment to this particular bow, I have something for you. Call it a replacement, for one so callously destroyed.” If he thought Tauriel surprised before, then this new expression can only be thunderstruck. She runs loving, trembling hands over the carved wood, her eyes seeming to brim over.

“You had this made… for me?” Uncomfortable with the depth of emotion in her thin face, Thranduil looks away. Too keenly he recalls her helpless plea: _If this is love, I do not want it. Take it from me._ The black weight of her grief had touched something in him, had pressed between his ribs to prick the wall he’d thought impenetrable around his heart. And though she had been far from his sight, the memory of that well of inexhaustible sorrow has awakened the sting of his own ancient torment. He’d railed against her; cursed her that she had brought him to this. Yet now, as her tears begin to pepper the gleaming weapon he has gifted her, he cannot find it in himself to loathe her.

“Do not weep, child,” he says helplessly, hand rising and lowering. He longs to press it against the curve of her cheek, to feel the pressure of her tears in his palm. Such little things, with such heaviness to them. But despite the fervency of that longing, it would not be right. Would not be acceptable to open his arms to her in her misery. From there, a slippery slope to a precarious future and an almost certain downfall. He knows well the stance of his kind in regards to bedding and wedding, and how the two should always be joined. Yet if love is truly gone, then what else is there left?

Tauriel sobs beside him, and Thranduil recalls his own early grief. Even then, he had not wept for the loss that harrowed the very core of him. He had forced it down and away, locked it tight and safe somewhere he would never have to look at it. Thranduil can’t help but consider that perhaps Tauriel’s manner of processing her loss is healthier. But she raises her head, her white face streaked with tears, and he cannot decide which is the greater ill.

“When will it end?” she asks, and he has not the wit nor the grace to tell her, even if he could find the words. How to tell her of that burning loss, how the gift of their kind can become a curse? That the first moment of love’s loss was as sharp as the last? How that with every breath on this earth, her heart would still call into the darkness of the void for its mate?

“If you are fortunate,” Thranduil replies, feeling the heft of each word, “then with your last breath.” The distraught elf next to him manages a croaky laugh, but the reprieve is short lived. This time, when her face crumples and her chest heaves with sobs, he cannot deny himself this one brief sensation. He drapes an arm over Tauriel’s shoulders, and it is a mark of her distraction that after only a moment of resistance, she melts against him. She is disturbed beyond comprehension but oh, the warmth of a woman by his side, the sheer trust of her naked throat as the bow clatters from her grip. His body sings with the joy of contact even as his heart rebels. He has not been so close to her since he brought the steel of his sword to kiss her throat.

“What I said,” she says, sobbing into the silk of his tunic. “That there is no love in you. I am sorry, my king. I did not understand.”

“I know, dear girl,” Thranduil sighs, and rests his cheek against the fiery silk of her hair. Dwarrows cut their beards and hair in grief, he recalls from some distant corner of his memory, as a mark there is no one left to care for them. But perhaps with Tauriel, that is not the case. He allows himself this lone weakness, to twine little strands of auburn hair around the tip of one finger, and yearns to crush her into him until none can pinpoint to where he ends and Tauriel begins. To find some sweet nepenthe in the shadows, here at the end of all things. “I know.”


	2. The Call To Something Greater

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel goes AWOL, Thranduil frets, and then they have a chat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words can't describe my pleasure in the lovely response to 'To The Morning'. You're all amazing and have inspired me to bang out another chapter.

For weeks after the encounter in the dungeons, Thranduil does not see Tauriel. Does not glimpse the spark of her hair in the billowing emptiness of his halls, or the proud tilt of her chin as she stares all down. She has left no record of her leaving, nor can he enquire as to her whereabouts. To publicly (or indeed, even privately) request knowledge of his former captain would imply two very unwelcome truths: for one, that he is not as all knowing as he attempts to appear. The fragile cracks in a kingdom’s strength can begin in the most unlikely yet unremarkable of places, mediocrity entwined with improbability.

(And the second truth? Well. It would not do to show even the slightest drop of affection or interest in Tauriel. Whispers would start. _Perhaps the Elven King is not so cold as we imagined._ And that way lies ruin, disaster and defeat.)

And yet she would not be the first despairing soul to find a quiet place in the woods and impale herself upon her sword. The thought awakes a strange chill in Thranduil, as though his body is lying in a pool of icy water, and his legs are refusing to obey his command to get up and move away. Tauriel knows the Greenwood like few others who have ever captained his guard; she would indeed be capable of finding a small nook or cranny to tuck herself into and calmly bleed her life into the dust. They – _he_ – might never find her body at all.

The first night he sits bolt upright, sweat cooling unpleasantly on his brow, when the dream comes. Thin and distant around the edges, he is a shade following Tauriel through the mist, watching silently and helplessly as she draws one of her twin swords and –

Perhaps he never would have slept again, if not for the fact that one morning, as though she had never left, Tauriel returns. As is his custom, he takes his morning meal alone in his chambers, but on his way to the throne room he spies a flash of red hair amongst the off-duty guardsmen practising in a courtyard. Spellbound, and unaware he has drawn to a stop in the centre of a rather busy corridor, he listens to the familiar cadence of her voice on the air.

“Very good. Now raise your shield a little, and try again.” She is coaching one of the new recruits, a youthful Silvan lad who looks at her as though she has hung the stars in the sky. Thranduil is well aware of Tauriel’s status amongst her own kind, for all the Sindar of his court look down upon her. He is the king, after all, and he hears the whispers. _She defied the king,_ some say, _she took a dwarf for her lover and fought alongside him. When he passed into the halls of his fathers, she was inconsolable._ It is not treason to talk, for all he longs to cut out the tongues of any who question his rule. Yet they are not, truly, questioning him. Merely wondering at what height of emotion could bring one such as Tauriel to defy her king and break the bonds of loyalty that tied her to his realm.

Thranduil could tell them, if they so asked. But of course they do not.

He has her summoned to the throne room in the lateness of the evening. She comes alone and unarmed, as though loath to offend him by bearing arms in his presence. Foolishness, of course. He himself is rarely without his sword even in the safety of his realm. Besides, he doubts she is completely without defence. A dagger tucked into a boot, perhaps.

“My lord,” she murmurs, dropping to her knees. Feigning disinterest, Thranduil examines a thumbnail as though it holds the secrets of the universe, and watches Tauriel out of the corner of his eye. It is surprising, the things people reveal when they think their listener is not paying attention.

“Your absence has been noticed.” It is not without a small stab of pain that he observes her head of massacred auburn hair. “Speak as to where you have been.”

She raises her eyes, and it is with mingled relief and concern that he sees she looks a little better. Oh, the hair is a mess and her skin is too pale even by elven standards, but her eyes are clear. “I went walking above,” she replies. “Did I err in leaving your palace? Should I have asked your authorization to come and go as any free creature might?” And therein lies the quandary. She is here by his grace alone, yet she is not his to command. Not anymore.

He is angry, and his rage is a many headed beast like the fiends of old, where to cut off one head would only spawn another three. His fury is as many faceted as the wretched Arkenstone of Thror, and he clutches it to him as tightly as the dwarrow lords cleaved to that jewel. In the first, he is infuriated by her wilfulness. She did not ask his permission even though she does not need it, and that grates. Add to that her improved appearance. Scarcely half a year has passed since the death of the dwarf. What right does she have to heal, when he cannot seem to wrench out the thorn that time and again needles at him until the poisoned blood flows? And how can she stand before him, when he can see the proof so clearly of her inconstant heart?

He has been silent too long. Tauriel has cocked her head to one side to inspect him, as she has no doubt seen him inspect so many prisoners over the centuries. Surely she cannot miss his hands white knuckled on his throne, the stiffness in his frame. Slowly, as though courting a wounded animal, she rises to her feet and steps forward.

“I went walking above,” she repeats. “I gained strength from the stars above and the whisper of the wind through the trees. I thought of Kíli and endured the pain of it, rather than shying away from the sharpness of my grief.” A faint smile lights up her face. “I killed a great many spiders.”

“I wonder you did not run out of arrows,” Thranduil says waspishly, peevish and irked that while he had fretted on his throne, his former guard captain had been safe all along. Well, as safe as one could be while hunting giant spiders through a forest poisoned with evil from Dol Guldur.

“Why else do you think I came back?” she asks lightly. But it is a test, he is sure of it.

“I cannot fathom,” Thranduil retorts coolly, priding himself on his detachment, and then of course he goes and ruins it. “I wish to do something for you,” he says abruptly, and Tauriel’s eyes widen.

“My lord, no. you have done so much for me already. Letting me return, after what I said, what I did…”

“Are you refusing to obey your king?” Thranduil barks, and instantly, Tauriel’s back straightens and her chin rises.

“Of course not, sire,” she says automatically. Thranduil fights down a smile. He can see she is displeased with herself. “You are too gracious.”

“Hardly,” Thranduil replies. “Your hair is an affront.” Now it is Tauriel’s turn to suppress a smile but he sees it, tucked into the corner of her mouth.

“You wish to fix my hair?” she inquires, and for a moment Thranduil is struck with the foolishness of the situation. He, exalted and elevated, come to this.

“I _wish_ ,” he says, stressing the last syllable, “to assist you in honouring your dead. Your dagger, if you please.” There is sudden wariness in Tauriel’s eyes. He is pleased to see it. She would have been a poor guard captain indeed if there was no wariness in her, even in the presence of her own king. But after a tense moment she reaches down and removes the small weapon from her boot. “Thank you. Now, sit.” He indicates one of the steps before his throne. Guarded and tense, Tauriel perches on the step, and he takes a seat behind her, a few inches higher to better access her hair.

“If you insist,” Tauriel says quietly, her hand outstretched. He cannot see her face. He wonders if she is afraid.

Thranduil takes the small, wickedly sharp blade from her. “Allow me,” he murmurs, halting a moment to study the dagger. It is very like one he gifted to Legolas some three hundred years ago, but there are subtle differences. It warms him in a strange and uncomfortable place, to think his son had an almost identical blade forged for the elf-maid Legolas held so high a regard for. Thranduil takes a comb from the pocket of his robes, for a moment feeling a thousand years younger and infinitely a fool. Oh, if his father could see him now.

He begins with the longest strands, sawing gently through the tresses until all the hair is roughly the same length. Then, with infinite care, he tugs the comb through the tangles, nimble fingers beginning to braid.

Thranduil knows a great deal more about dwarrows than some might expect. Not always has there been discord between their two races, for all Thranduil embraces it now. Once, his visits to Erebor had been sanctioned by the King under the Mountain, and he had heard a great many things and seen a deal more.

“Dwarrows,” he tells her now, “cut their hair and beards in times of grief. I see you have heard of this. Don’t nod your head! Be still. But there are certain braids they use to show they are grieving. Long ago I learnt this, well before you were born.”

When he is finished, Tauriel is almost unrecognisable as the elf he had comforted in the dungeons. With reverent hands she touches the small braids he has placed in her hair. They are not long, nor particularly impressive. But they are accurate. He remembers this. And the unbraided parts of her hair are shining and soft, falling to accentuate the shape of her face. She is infinitely more pleasing to look upon, now.

“Why did you do this thing?” Tauriel asks, turning around on the step to look her king in the eye. “You did not need to.” Thranduil inclines his head.

“Perhaps you are not the only one who feels you must make reparations,” he says, and Tauriel snorts. It is a graceless and distinctly non-elven noise, and he finds the corner of his mouth twitching. She learned crassness from her dwarf, he thinks, among other things. Yet he must speak his mind. “Had I not withdrawn my forces, your… Kíli, he might yet live.” Tauriel’s eyes widen, and with sudden force and an utter lack of propriety, she presses her hand to Thranduil’s mouth to stay his words. The action alone is enough to shock him into silence. No one touches the Elven King, now that his son has gone. He had not realised how deeply he craved it.

“You must not say that,” she says fiercely. “You were looking to the interests of our people. No one can deny the importance of that. And I… I cannot live in maybes and what ifs. What’s done is done. There is no going back.” She removes her hand as if to allow him to speak, and on a whim he grasps it in his own. Such a small hand, and yet so capable. Would she have taken his life, he wonders, and is it wrong that such a death feels more like a benediction.

“You are too kind,” he says huskily, barely aware of the rasp in his voice, and bends his head to brush his lips against the calloused warmth of her palm.

Tauriel darts away as though he has burned her with his kiss, and Thranduil is not offended. She is staring at him as though seeing him for the first time, her eyes wide and filled with a new, striking knowledge. He knows her, now. She will flee to the woods she loves so well, sit draped in starlight and contemplate every twist and turn of what has occurred. Perhaps, had he sought the comfort of the stars in his youth, the wound of his ruined heart might not be so acute.

There is silence.

“Have you ever considered, sire,” Tauriel says thoughtfully, and he tears his eyes from the cool stone to look at her. “That grief is like a broken bone, shattered and deformed? And that, my lord, it is entirely within the realm of possibility that like a broken limb, one’s heart may heal in a manner that impedes its function?”

“Explain what you mean,” Thranduil demands, too heartsick to dissemble the core of her words. Tauriel brushes back an errant strand of hair, touches one of her new braids as though reminding herself of a truth.

“To walk on a limb healed wrong is to suffer constant pain,” she tells him. “Perhaps grief is the same. Perhaps the poison may remain in the wound.” She bows her head and takes her leave.

For once, Thranduil is completely without words.


	3. For Not All Tears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel goes for a wander, and brings Thranduil a gift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh you lovely creatures. Your feedback to this little story is beyond wonderful. Today was my first day at my new job, but all I could think about was getting home and adding a little more to this tale.

Tauriel leaves his kingdom as the first prying fingers of dawn sneak over the horizon. But this absence is different than the one before. This time, she bids him goodbye in the last few minutes of darkness, standing together under a vast ceiling of stars.

“You said once,” she says, shattering the silence, “that a hundred years is a mere blink in the life of an elf.”

“I did,” Thranduil agrees. Tauriel turns up her face to his.

“I do not intend to be gone that long,” she replies. “Nor do I doubt that you will be here when I return.” It is as though she is attempting to extract a promise from him: he will not so easily be caught.

“It is beneath me to wait upon the beck and call of a lowly Silvan such as yourself,” Thranduil sniffs haughtily. Once, Tauriel would have blazed silent and furious at such a comment, but no longer. Now she merely smiles with a hint of indulgent fondness. “Nevertheless, I will be here.” Tauriel smirks.

“I would not expect you to wait for me at the gates, as a lovelorn elfling awaits her lover’s call,” Tauriel says lightly. “Merely that this is your realm, and long may you reign.”

It is a strange sort of goodbye. Stranger still how right it feels. Thranduil gives up on a shard of his self-control and allows his fingertips to rest on her shoulder. Under his touch he can feel the energy thrumming through Tauriel, the eagerness in her to get on the road and seek out the enormity of the world. “Be off with you, then,” he tells her. “I have far more important things to do with my day than stand about waiting for you to venture forth.”

When Tauriel smiles he can still see the weight of her grief. There is a poignant sorrow in her now that will never fade, even when mirth and joy are also within her. It is the way of the world. He imagines a similar melancholy is in him also, for all he smiles less than his stalwart, disgraced former captain.

Thranduil begins a leisurely walk back to the gates. It is unusual, he reflects dryly, for him to leave his halls for such a trivial reason as to bid farewell to a disgraced elf. It is unheard of, for him to go walking under through the forest without a squad of guards. Two unlikely occurrences in one morn, he thinks with a stab of amusement, and all for one insignificant creature. And yet he would not have it any other way.

True dawn has come and she is on her way, the better to cover some ground before the day becomes too warm. Spring has come to the Greenwood and even now, in the slowly spreading darkness of his forest, the world is beautiful and bright.

“Wait!” he hears her shout, and something like panic flits through his chest. He is already turning with his sword drawn when he realises there is no danger. No danger, other than the elf returning to him, almost running in her haste.

The fever of beginning her journey has infected Tauriel; she is brighter already with the wanderlust of the young. There is a certain recklessness to her, and for a moment Thranduil wonders if it was a mistake, letting her go. Yet she would have gone regardless; it is better that she goes thus, with his blessing. And he cannot truly bring himself to dislike something which lifts some of the gloom from her shoulders.

He only has a moment to think on this, because Tauriel approaches and does not stop a respectful distance away. Thranduil is frozen, rooted to the ground like the most ancient of trees, his hands useless at his sides and his sword dangling towards the earth. His mouth, at least, has not betrayed him. “Did you forget something?” he inquires acidly, and his former lieutenant nods.

“Abject foolishness,” she states, and oh she is too close, he doesn’t know how to _deal_ with this sort of closeness when it’s not on his terms. “It kept me from doing something I wanted.”

And what is that, he wants to ask, but she does not let him. Quickly and purposefully, she rises on her toes and grips the front of his robes in her fist, and kisses him.

It is not a long kiss, but neither can it be excused as something utterly platonic. It is presumptuous of her and completely inappropriate and damn him, he wants _more_ , wants to sweep her away down to a secluded place where he can melt into her and for a few blessed moments _forget_ –

She pulls away just as he’s about to unbend his limbs and his pride and crush her tightly to his chest. “I will return,” she promises and is gone, as lightly as the wind through the trees, and she does not look back. Thranduil looks enough and more for them both; he watches her go until the trees hide her from his view and his keen ears cannot longer hear her feet.

Even after that, it takes a long time before he can collect himself enough to walk back. At the gates, the watch has just changed. “Sire?” asks one of the guards tentatively, as though doubting the evidence of his eyes. Thranduil pins him with the foulest of glares and stalks past, slamming a door just for emphasis.

He has a reputation to maintain, after all.

 

She said she’d be gone a month. Just long enough to shake the dust from her feet and to feel the wind in her hair. It would be wrong to say that he counts down the days; he has far too much self-control for that. But he notes the spring turning to summer, a warmth coming into the world, and after that he does not go above so often anymore. What point is there, when there is no flash of fiery hair around the corner, and every day lessens the likelihood that she will return?

He is the Elven King, the lord of the Greenwood, revered and feared in equal measure. To dwell on thoughts of a child not even out of the shadow of her first millennia – it is beneath him. He sits on his throne and sinks further into a miasma of something like regret, not that he would ever call it that. Fury is a better name for it, fury of a heart given hope and then denied it. Yet a small piece of that self-same heart clings to the memory of her, to the memory of a kiss in a world of green growing things, when for a moment he had dared to hope.

And yet one month stretches into two, into four, into six. And with every day that passes he finds it easier to once again school his heart to ice.

 

 

Durin’s Day comes and goes, and shortly after comes the first anniversary of the dwarf-prince’s death. Thranduil no longer truly believes Tauriel will come back. He attends to the duties and requirements of his kingdom with a zealousness bordering on cruelty, and every night forces himself to imagine the elf maid’s battered and broken body, left abandoned in the dirt. It is with some blind faith that he does it, as though exposure to the horror of such images will kill the pervasive need for her that is still rooted deep in him. And after he drinks himself into such a sleep that might echo death.

Seven months, and then eight. And then –

She appears in his throne room, as though it has been only days that she has been gone. He loathes her for her reappearance and loathes her for ever leaving. But more than any of that, he despises himself for the quick, traitorous flutter of his heart at the sight of her.

Ah, the sight of her. She is sun-browned and thinner than before, her clothes dusty and quite obviously not of elven make. There is a bag on her shoulders like the rucksacks of Men, for when they must make long journeys on foot.

“Where is it you have been?” Thranduil asks, seated on his throne and clenching his fists so he does not stand and run to her. Tauriel beams.

“Many places,” she replies. “North, mostly. I fought with the Dúnedain, the Rangers of the North. Legolas was there. He sends his regards.”

Regards. From his son. As though he had never held that tiny blonde babe in his arms and vowed to keep him safe from all the horrors of the world. As though his wife, weary but joyous, had never turned to him and said, _what shall we name him?_ and Thranduil had felt his heart in his chest fit to burst.

“I have something for you,” Tauriel says, and Thranduil forces himself back to the present. Forces himself to forget his son’s face and the tiny palm that had once pressed against his own. _Ada, ada..._ Thranduil pushes the memory away, and focuses on the erstwhile guard captain. She is a far cry from the composed creature he once supported, but the differences are deep within as well as on the surface.

And oh, her hair. Her braids, which he had so carefully placed in her hair? They are gone. Her hair is wild and loose, a little longer, and her smile has a hint of savagery. Her joy is almost feral.

“I rode like demons had possessed me,” she confides breathlessly. “Once I had them in my grasp, I wanted you to be the first to see –” She breaks off, slinging the hideous rucksack from her shoulders.

Had _what_ in her grasp? Does she think he can be appeased by tawdry trinkets like a child dazzled by gilt and glass?

“I do not care,” he informs her, and derives bitter enjoyment from the fall of her face. “Whatever you have brought, I do not want it. As I do not want you.” Her eyes are clouded with confusion, and the fledgling sparks of anger; she will not submit to his cruelty without a fight. She would not be herself if she could.

“Something has changed!” Tauriel exclaims. “What is it that I have done to offend you?” Thranduil laughs, a dark and bitter thing.

“You said one month,” he says, pouring himself a glass of wine and keeping his back to her. “You broke your promise. You will forgive me, I think, if I do not keep mine.”

“Thranduil,” she says, and the sound of his name in her voice is enough to shudder him to the very marrow of his bones. But not for nothing had he lived for months dragging himself down deeper and deeper into the cold.

“You forget yourself,” he thunders, turning to her in a storm of flapping robes and fury. “I am your king.” He watches Tauriel’s face twist into a mask of anger, her fingers shaking on the straps of her bag.

“I thought I made it clear when I renounced you. You are no king of mine,” she hisses. “Perhaps I have not made myself clear. You may be a king, but you are my friend first. And I believe that beneath your arrogant exterior is something worth fighting for. I will not be forced away by cold words and cruel deeds. All your words are a lie and a folly, but once I kissed you in a forest, and you did not pull away. Your actions speak volumes, and for that alone I can forgive you your cruelty.

“I went to Erebor,” she continues, a strange recklessness in her voice, “and I spoke with Dain Ironfoot, King under the Mountain. Long did I attempt to persuade him to my view, until finally Balin son of Fundin interceded on my behalf.” A tear slips down one cheek, and angrily she swipes it away. “I spoke of Kíli,” she rasps, in a voice as ominous as thunder, “and for some time it seemed even that would not sway them. But eventually, I prevailed.”

“What,” Thranduil says in a voice like silk wrapped in thunder, “are you talking about?” Tauriel’s mouth is set in a grim line and her eyes are wary. She is afraid, he realises; afraid of him.

Or, perhaps, for him.

“I think it would be better if I showed you somewhere less public,” she states, and it is a mark of his distraction that he does not argue. Merely leads her to a small council chamber, filled only with a table and a handful of chairs.

“Well?” he demands cuttingly. “What trifle have you picked up in your dalliances with the wretched inhabitants of that dismal Mountain?”

Tauriel takes a deep breath, and pulls out a heavy wooden box, carved with runes he both recognises and cannot decipher. She places it in his hands. It is not very heavy, for all of the weight of the wood. “You are not the only one who feels you must make reparations,” Tauriel says gravely, and he tears his eyes away to look at her. She is stern and severe, but there is a light in her eyes to banish all the darkness in the world.

Thranduil has a terrible, wonderful feeling he knows what is in the box. He sets it gently on a table, breathing in deep before he opens it. It cannot be, and yet. With immense care, he flicks open the lid.

_There are gems in the Mountain I too desire…white gems, full of starlight…_

There is a ragged gasp, and he does not know who it is making that dreadful, wounded noise. Does not know, until abruptly he realises the truth. It is him, and the White Gems of Lasgalen fill the box, the most striking of them set into a necklace he knows as well as his own body.

“How?” he breathes, but Tauriel does not answer. At least, not that question.

“I am sorry I was away so long,” she murmurs. “I thought this might make up for my breaking my promise.”

Thranduil is not listening. Every ounce of his attention is caught by the shimmering necklace, by the bell-like voice ringing in his ears. His wife and Legolas in the forest, his son toddling about on tiny fat legs, his wife holding out her hands to the plump elfling. _Come, melethron, look at what your son is doing!_

“I always meant to have it made,” Thranduil hears himself murmur. “She wanted it so. But I did not trust dwarrows to fulfil the task. I kept telling her, _soon, soon. In a year, in a decade. We have all the time in the world._ ”

That is not him speaking. That is not his words, trembling and faltering, his voice near to failing him.

“My lord,” Tauriel says, and her words are as gentle as the starlight above, and just as true. “Thranduil.”

His hands are shaking and the world is ending and the pain is so great he cannot bear it.

Thranduil smacks the lid of the box closed, but the force of the blow sends the gemstones scattering far and wide across the stone floor. There is something wrong with his eyes: they are blurring and burning, almost as though –

He raises an incredulous hand to dab at the corner of his eye, and feels wetness.

“Go,” he murmurs, and feels the heat of Tauriel’s hand on his arm.

“Sire –”

“GO!” Thranduil bellows, loud enough, he is sure, to wake the slumbering inhabitants of Dale and Erebor both. “Be gone from my sight!” He turns away, well aware of his shoulders shaking, his chest heaving, and inch by inch regains his control until the burning tears have been fought back. Not a single one has fallen, and yet what a weakling he feels.

Tauriel is gone.

Thranduil draws in a shuddering breath, running a hand over his face. It is only now that he notices the spilled gems, his wife’s necklace tossed carelessly on the floor like trash. He falls to his knees, scooping up the gems by the handful, reverently lifting the necklace and settling it on the table.

_I am sorry, beloved, forgive me, forgive me for all I have done –_

He scrapes his hands against the stone until they bleed, picking up even the tiniest of gems from in the cracks between the flagstones. And when the task is done he remains on the floor, kneeling into the long hours of the night, envisioning times long past and almost destroyed with the agony of it.

The wounds bleed for a long time, but he does not care.

No one comes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dating the death of Thranduil’s wife is difficult. Angmar fell in TA 1975, meaning Legolas’s mother would have had to have died prior to that. The general consensus seems to be that Legolas was born sometime after TA 1000, so that part fits. Thranduil had the White Gems crafted into a necklace and delivered the gems directly into Thror’s hands. Thror was King under the Mountain from TA 2590 - TA 2790. Thus, it follows that the necklace was created after the death of Thranduil’s wife.
> 
> Another option is that Thranduil’s wife died in Angmar, but after it fell. This seems to be the most reasonable explanation, but I chose to go with the first option.
> 
> If anyone has any other theories, please comment and let me know!


	4. Ever Eager For More

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Tauriel's gift, and an explanation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep those lovely comments coming, o wonderful readers. :)

Once, in his great naiveté, Thranduil had thought the necklace would help. That it would salve something deep within him and the torment of years almost without measure would be healed.

The necklace does not help.

He is not so far gone to take it to bed beside him. But the box containing the White Gems and the necklace is placed in his chambers, and some days he cannot tear his eyes away from it. Is this what Oakenshield and his forefathers felt for that Arkenstone? He is loath to understand even a fragment of their mindless desire for that wretched stone, and in truth he is not so like them. They became obsessed with a symbol of kingship and prized it above else. Thranduil is fascinated by a necklace, because of who it should have been for.

But it is not only his to keep. It is an heirloom of his people, as he has said so often, and his people deserve to see it as much as they deserve to view the other great treasures of his reign. It is displayed by his side in the throne room for some days, and at some point nearly every inhabitant of his palace comes to peer at the gems and whisper to one another.

 _The king must have great power to have wrested the White Gems of Lasgalen from the grasp of the dwarrows,_ he hears. _How could he have done it?_ And murmurs beside of the gems’ beauty, their resemblance to starlight, the grace of the carefully designed necklace. One would think he would be, if not happy, as close to it as it was possible for him to achieve.

And yet not. The gems have awoken in him a powerful unrest. To see them is to feel the terrible agony that have driven him to go to Thror and his craftsman in the first place. The sight of it is the reminder of a promise unfulfilled until far too late, and of years where the thought of his wife’s gems in the hands of the dwarrows caused him to burn from the inside out. There is no association of joy, not now. He holds the delicate chain in his hands and does not recall the ivory glory of the throat he would have fastened it to. The returned gems do not mimic the glimmer of her eyes.

 

He has invited Tauriel to the small council chamber. One of the most trusted members of his household had delivered a message to her, but he had not known if she would come. He still thinks of his behaviour that night and withers a little inside.

“You may have,” Thranduil says, “your position as guard captain back.”

Tauriel stands as if frozen, and for a long time it is as if she cannot speak. “Why?” she asks finally, her voice cracked and raw. Thranduil frowns.

“You must desire something in return for restoring to me the heirloom of my people. Name your price. I would not have a debt between us.” He turns, and is almost horrified by the sight of her. Tauriel is breathing heavily, her face as white as milk save for two red blotches on her cheeks. Her fists are clenched.

“You _think_ ,” she whispers, voice gone so low and quiet as to resemble thunder on the horizon, “that I brought them to you for _money_?” Her fist flies out and smashes down hard on the table she is standing by; Thranduil is enthralled, fascinated, and a little afraid. “That I brought you the White Gems for treasure, for position, for _power_?”

“What other reason could there be?” Thranduil demands, seething already, for all they have exchanged few words. Few others can cause such a rise in him, and he still cannot comprehend why she succeeds where so many others cannot. “The goodness of your heart? I am no child to be assuaged by assurances of the world’s innate goodness. I have seen too much of evil and death to believe in fictions.”

“You have seen much yet you cannot see what truly counts,” she flings back at him. “I tell you now, I did not bring you the gems in an attempt to regain what I have lost. Like becoming guard captain could ever be all I have lost.”

“Then why?” Thranduil demands, his face an inch from her own. “Why, damn you?”

“Are you so blind?” she answers, and as though a door has been unlocked, he sees the truth. “Because you were in torment, and you are my friend. And my heart wept for you.”

“Then your heart is a fool,” he says brutally, and Tauriel’s answering smile is both wry and sad.

“I’m quite aware of that,” she replies. Thranduil continues as though she hasn’t spoken.

“I am the Elven King, the ruler of the Greenwood and the king of all I survey for leagues in any direction of here. And you are –”          

“A lowly Silvan elf,” Tauriel finishes, but she does not seem angered. “You are my friend in spite of your idiocy when it comes to the alleged purity of your race,” she remarks evenly. “I can assure you, regardless of where an elf comes from or from whom he is descended, all of us can die. A Sindarin like yourself can die on the end of a sword or at the swing of an axe just as much as a Silvan can. Or as Men do, or dwarrows or hobbits, or any other race that inhabits this earth.”

“I know well enough the capability of our kind to die,” Thranduil snaps. “As to Men and dwarrows, they are neither my concern nor my kind. If elven life can be spared, then I will save it.”

“At what cost to others?” Tauriel questions. “Is the value of my life, or yours, or of any elf greater than the value of a member of another race? How many would you let die to save me?”

“At the moment, none,” Thranduil barks. “You are being unreasonable and, were there an enemy here now with a blade to your throat, I would not stir one finger to aid you.” Tauriel smirks.

“So I am only of worth when I submit to you,” she says idly. “That is interesting. Humans have a saying about pots and the colour black, by the way. You should look into it. I daresay it might be of interest to you.”

“Whoever told you that you are amusing was a liar and a deceiver,” Thranduil mutters. “You charmless, graceless creature.” If anything, Tauriel seems pleased.

“We all have our talents,” she agrees, flicking back the hair from her face. His eyes are once again drawn to the lack of braids. Has she given up on her grief? He finds he does not like that thought. Or is it contempt for the one that placed them in her hair? That thought is even less welcome.

“Why did you take out the braids?” he asks her. He takes a seat at the head of the council table. Tauriel lifts one shoulder in a lopsided shrug.

“I wore them during my time with Legolas and the Rangers of the North,” she says. “They grew a little ragged from many days on the road or in the saddle, but I kept them. There were… many orc attacks during my time with them. I meant only to see Legolas, and continue on. But so many were slain during my first week alone. I… could not leave them.” She looks at the floor. “I would not expect you to understand.”

But oh, he does. He understands her need to help people, her inability to turn away from the suffering of others. Even before she loved the dwarf Kíli, he knows, she abandoned her responsibilities and Thranduil’s kingdom to save him. Not even to save him, but to try to save him; to cling to a fading hope that it was even possible.

She is waiting for him to acknowledge her. “Go on,” he says, and gestures to her to sit down. She does so, sitting beside him rather than opposite, which would have been more appropriate.

“I was hardly aware of the seasons passing, that the time stretched out so long. I woke and fought and slept and fought, sometimes with Legolas, sometimes not. But eventually the orcs were, if not defeated, then subdued and small enough a group to be manageable.

“I could not forget how kind you were to me. Don’t scoff. You let me return even after all I did and the terrible things I said. You let me grieve, you helped me honour Kíli. You cannot know how much it helped to heal me. To allow to mourn him in my own time, in a place I know so well, and to wander where I would.” She turns her head and looks him square in the eye, and he cannot look away. “I thought perhaps, if I brought you something you craved so deeply, it might help. And I did not think Dain would not have appreciated an elf entering his halls with dwarven braids. I was forced to remove them, in the hope it would help me to achieve my goal.”

Thranduil has not the heart to tell her that all the gems and the necklace have done is intensify his grief. Yet it is as if she can read his mind, pluck out the thoughts from his brain and speak them aloud. “I knew they would hurt you, and that is good,” she says vehemently, and he eyes her in surprise. “My lord. The heart can be a wound that never heals, not unless something happens to wake up that old pain, to cut it out and sear it closed. Then, perhaps…” She does not continue, but he does not want her to. This is all too much. The concept of a world without pain is too much for him to comprehend just now, the clear stars of her eyes too intense to meet.

“Did you not think to write?” Thranduil asks instead. Tauriel looks away.

“I did not think you cared so much for me that you would be displeased when I did not return,” she murmurs, and he almost gasps in incredulity. Does she think he is so free with affection that he will impart it upon any and with less cause?

“You are perhaps unaware of the regard I hold for you,” he informs her, staring determinedly at the wood grain of the table.

A calloused, warm hand finds its way into his, and he raises his eyes in surprise. Tauriel is smiling, and he tightens his grip on her fingers. “I am aware now,” she replies, and strokes a thumb over his knuckles tenderly. “What would you have of me, then?”

And oh, such a question. There is a time for boldness, and this might be it. But still something holds him back.

“Be the captain of my guard once more,” Thranduil asks, but Tauriel shakes her head.

“We are beyond that now,” she replies.

“Take up your sword in defence of my realm,” he counters.

“I will not.”

“Stand beside me all of my days.” He does not truly know what he means by it. There are a thousand ways she could perceive intent through that statement. But for all her youth, Tauriel is wiser by far.

“No,” she says, and it is the gentlest of words. Thranduil sighs, heavy in the quiet of the room, and turns to all that is left.

“Then stay,” he says finally, too weary for lies. “Stay, and make this place bearable.” Tauriel turns her head to look him in the eye, squinting a little against the dim light from a handful of candles. He can see her keen eyes moving over his face, noting every detail, every line. Her scrutiny is not unkind, for all it is sharp. At last she nods her head once, decisively, as though resolved, and the outcome has been taken from her hands.

“I will.”


	5. Soft and Quick as Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel and Thranduil go for a walk and have a swordfight, which makes a change from all the verbal sparring these two get up to. A little more light-hearted than previous chapters, but hopefully no less enjoyable.

Tauriel is waiting for him by the front gate. It is far easier for her to pass through his realm undetected, for he is recognised almost everywhere he goes. Yet this early there is not so many elves wandering his halls.

“Good morning,” she murmurs lightly. Thranduil notes, with something like mingled pride and happiness and consternation, she has replaced the braids he had placed in her hair so long ago. Pride and happiness, that she would continue their practise, and consternation, both at the leap of his foolish heart and at the death of the hope that she might ask him to put the braids back in for her.

So it is with a trifling amount of stiffness that he replies, “If you say it is,” and is rewarded by her wry grin.

“Did you have another motive for asking me to go walking with you?” Tauriel asks. “I presume your primary reason was to allow me to bask in the beauty of the day – with company, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Thranduil agrees blandly.

“Yet in all the time I have known you, you have never had just one reason for anything you do. Hence I am curious to the ulterior, less altruistic motive beneath.” Thranduil hides a smile. Really, she is beginning to know him too well.

“Do you know,” Thranduil says, “that while you were gone I had a thousand and one questions I wanted to ask you, but now that you are here, I cannot recall a single one?”

“A common problem,” Tauriel agrees, and Thranduil cannot bite down a faint scowl. Common, indeed. At risk of quoting his former guard captain, the human aphorism about the comparative colour of kitchenware springs to mind. “If they occur to you in due course, then you may ask me any of your queries,” Tauriel says, and Thranduil does not speak for some time.

“From your earliest days, you have expressed an interest in the life of a warrior,” he contemplates aloud. Tauriel nods, encouraging him on. “Did you never think to choose a different life?”

Tauriel is silent for some moments. “A pertinent question,” she allows. “After my parents were killed, I wanted vengeance against those who had taken my family from me. But later, my desire to bear arms became less a need to dole out punishment and more to try to stem the flow of pointless death in the world. To see no other children orphaned.” She hesitates, but adds: “When I feel as though I have not made any difference, I think of the Bowman’s children. Had I not been there the night that the dragon came, they may have died. And I would ever consider their deaths to be a violation of the natural order of the world.” She smiles, and says self-deprecatingly, “I never showed much aptitude for anything other than killing and hunting the scum of the world. So I suppose, in a way, it was fortunate that my skills and my desires overlapped so greatly.”

“You are wrong, to state you have aptitude for no other field,” Thranduil replies. “Throughout your tenure as guard and then guard captain, you were known as capable in a great many fields.” Tauriel shrugs.

“It would have been a kindness for those who thought as much to have informed me,” she says with a hint of tartness to her voice.

“I’m telling you now,” Thranduil deadpans, and Tauriel rolls her eyes.

“Were you not the king, I would challenge you to a practise bout, and make you rue your words.”

“Then it is to my advantage that I am the king,” Thranduil replies.

“Indeed.”

They walk on in silence for some minutes. The day is fresh and cool. It will be warmer later but for now, in the stillness of the early morning, the day’s heat has not set in. His halls can tend to be rather cool; the over robe necessary in the throne room is not so greatly required out under the light of the sun. Yet to walk through the forest in just trousers and tunic like a commoner? Unthinkable.

“You should have trained as a healer,” Thranduil says, breaking the quiet. Tauriel lifts an eyebrow in mute query. A little flustered, for he had not meant to speak his thoughts aloud, Thranduil goes on. “It was no pinprick, the wound you healed in Laketown.” Tauriel’s face grows cold and distant, as closed off as if a wall of steel had slammed down between them. The reminder of the dwarf is ever there between them, for all Tauriel does not speak of him so often anymore.

“I. I had… motivation,” she rasps. “I am sure I could not have been nearly so useful had it been someone I did not know lying on the Bowman’s dining table.” Thranduil allows himself a faint smile.

“There are those throughout Middle-earth who might tutor you further in the art of healing,” he drawls. “The Lady of Lorien, for instance.” Tauriel’s eyes light with a sudden mischief, one he does not like the look of.

“Or perhaps the lord of Rivendell,” Tauriel replies carelessly, and she laughs when a grimace of dislike comes over Thranduil’s face without his permission.

“If you wish to learn shoddy conjurer’s tricks,” Thranduil says stiffly, and Tauriel rolls her eyes.

“Come now. Lord Elrond is renowned throughout many lands for his skill in healing. Personal differences aside, you cannot deny he is rather… impressive.” Thranduil arches an eyebrow in, by his standards, passes for mute incredulity. He has the distinct impression that Tauriel is teasing him. Needless to say, nobody has teased him for a very long time. Thranduil cannot decide as to whether he loathes the imposition, or rather likes it. But Tauriel cannot keep a straight face for long. Chuckling, she pats his arm kindly.

“Do not fear, sire. I find you infinitely more charismatic than Elrond.” More than slightly mollified, Thranduil continues walking, allowing Tauriel to keep her light hold on his arm. “In comparison to his daughter, on the other hand –”

“Do not continue.”

 

 _Wear something light and comfortable, and meet me in the old guards' courtyard at an hour after dawn._ The writing is unmistakable, as is the lack of formality in the note. Not for the first time does Thranduil wish that Tauriel had returned to his guard. Then, at least, there might be a hint of distance. But oh, for every iota of disrespect there is an abundance of new warmth in his life.

The old guards' courtyard is an older part of his palace, long since disused. He had not known anyone utilised that part of his halls. He finds Tauriel pink cheeked and sweating, in loose clothes far less revealing than her usual attire. Yet he feels as though he has been granted a glimpse of Tauriel not often seen, a peek into a hidden world.

“You wish to spar with me,” Thranduil says, managing to restrain most of his scorn. “You are more of a fool than I previously perceived.” Tauriel makes a face at him, rather like a child would.

“I am not so fond of death as to spar with you with live steel,” she replies. Thranduil follows her gaze.

“Practise swords,” he says disdainfully. “I have not used a practise sword since well before you were born.” Tauriel arches an eyebrow.

“All the better to pick one up again,” she says dryly. “No matter one’s level, practise is imperative to keep improving proficiency.” Thranduil lifts the practise sword and tests the weight of it, swinging it in a slow circle.

“I would draw your attention to your previous bow, and let that stand as testament to my skill.”

“Bully,” Tauriel says lightly. “Do get warmed up.”

“I might say the same to you,” Thranduil grouses, but obeys.

“I’ve been here since before dawn,” Tauriel replies. He had guessed as much, from her appearance.

She watches him warm up, and he feels no small sense of satisfaction at how she is obviously impressed. Well, why shouldn’t she be? He has had long enough to hone his skills with a blade – and with a multitude of other weapons, for that matter. Why Tauriel’s appreciation should touch him so deeply, he cannot tell.

“You should work with some of the more advanced guardsmen,” Tauriel says approvingly, and like an idiot he feels the warm glow of her praise all the way down to his toes. “Your experience would be invaluable; they could learn much from you. Once they got over their fear of accidently killing you, of course.” Thranduil smirks.

“Death by practise sword sounds most ignoble and exceedingly drawn out and painful,” he retorts.

“I’ll try not to harm you, then,” Tauriel agrees, and their swords meet in a clack that echoes throughout the courtyard.

Much to his surprise, Thranduil is enjoying this. Thrust, parry, it all blurs together after a while. Tauriel is not so proficient with a single sword as opposed to her twin knives: he recognises that she is aware of this fact and thusly is practising with this particular weapon.

Their long battle ends with Tauriel flat on her back and his sword at her throat. He had used a sweep of the foot to knock her off balance, and from there it had taken little effort to press the point of his sword against where her pulse hammered hard in her neck. Thranduil offers her a hand to rise and, scowling, she takes it and climbs to her feet. “I think we can all see who the victor is,” Thranduil says smugly, and Tauriel’s expression grows even darker.

“Wrong. It was I who bested you,” she replies heatedly. “If you hadn’t _cheated_ –”

“There is no such thing as cheating when one’s life is at stake,” Thranduil retorts sharply. “Don’t be a fool, Tauriel.”

“I might say the same to you,” she mutters, and then glances up to pin him with the sharpness of her gaze. “Well, then? What price does the king demand on the occasion of his victory?” She sketches a very elegant and mocking bow.

“Oh, shut up,” Thranduil snaps, and pulls her into his arms.

Her lips are salty with sweat from their battle, but he finds he does not mind it. Rather, it seems to make her more real, keep him aware of her presence. He pulls away, cups his hand against the base of her neck. “Open for me,” he instructs, and as though enchanted, Tauriel parts her lips, allowing him to touch one finger to the fullness of her lower lip. Thranduil leans in and kisses her there, half-expecting her to be shy and retiring, as befits a maiden with no experience with men. Yet Tauriel is no ordinary maiden, he is coming to know, and he is taken aback when she reaches up to tangle her hands in his hair, slanting her mouth against his own. Her forwardness, rather than being distasteful, only serves to make him want her more. It has been too long since he had a willing woman in his arms and in his bed.

He stops, horrified at his own thought. Of course he cannot bed Tauriel. They are not bonded and never will be. To flout the customs of his own people would be unforgiven, as well as being an act of betrayal of Tauriel and her best interests. What if she chooses to marry another, as the years go by? _She will not,_ a small voice tells him. _The dwarf was the beginning and the end for her, as well you know._

“This is not the place for such affairs,” Thranduil tells her, his voice only a trifle unsteady, and is both gratified and dismayed to see Tauriel bow her head in agreement. The tilt of her profile should never be bent in such obvious submission, he thinks, and then is irked with himself for thinking of such an imprudent thing in the first place.

“You go first,” she says gently. “I will follow, later. It is best for no one to see us together.”

As he walks (rather rapidly, and a little less pale than usual) back to his chambers, part of him wishes she had disagreed. _I will stand beside you_ , she says in his imagination. Yet he has had a queen, and no other could ever replace her.

It is a pretty mess he has found himself in, Thranduil decides, and there is no easy answer, save to send Tauriel from his realm and reinstate the banishment of a year earlier. He is not so cruel to send her from a place which brings her peace, and yet his own peace is compromised. Thranduil had found a sense of – not contentment, but as close to it as he could come. He had not known there was any other option.

Well. He knows now.


	6. The Body That Counts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel has a tale to tell. Thranduil almost has a coronary.

_So, you kissed me and I kissed you. That is no reason for you to hide yourself away with the White Gems like a miser atop his hoard,_ Tauriel would say, hands on her hips and scowling a little. That is what she would say were she here to mock him, but she is not.

He has delegated the everyday running of his realm to the head of his household. Without the requirements of managing his kingdom, Thranduil has taken to remaining in his chambers or, at the furthest, very close to them. The thought of encountering Tauriel somewhere in his halls is unthinkable. Even more unthinkable is that she has taken his rejection badly and has left without even a goodbye.

He doesn’t need to hear the whispers to know they are beginning. Wood Elves love gossip almost as much as the stars, he is aware, and he has not been so absent from the main centre of his halls in many years. There are those who would take advantage of a power vacuum, for all they flatter and fawn over him when they are in his presence. And though his kind do not sicken, he would not be the first among royalty to be quietly poisoned in the night.

But the thought of seeing Tauriel again is unendurable. Not now, when he has decided that this strange attachment between them cannot continue. He has been called faithless and inconstant in his alliances with Men and others, but he will do right by Tauriel in this.

She is already in the small council chamber when he arrives. This barely used room has become their unofficial meeting place, of sorts. He feels a pang in his chest at the realisation that this is the last time.

A bottle of wine is set on the table, and two glasses with the wine already poured

“You wanted to see me,” Tauriel says, her face giving nothing away, as he seats himself and reaches for one of the glasses. “I take it has something to do with the way you turned tail and ran like a frightened rabbit last week.” Her voice is even, but her words disclose that she is not completely without feeling.

“This cannot continue,” Thranduil says stiffly. “A dalliance of this nature is not in the best interest for either of us. I am a king. And you – you may desire a family of your own one day. You may fall in love again, for all that you feel now that love is gone forever from your life. To indulge in this passion carelessly may come back to haunt you. And I – you may think little of my honour, but it exists. I would not bed a maiden without the proper sacrament of marriage. At least, not a maiden I cared more for than a night’s pleasure.” Thranduil draws in a deep breath. There. He has said it. This madness will come to an end. Tauriel will see the wisdom in this. Tauriel, she is –

Laughing. Tauriel is laughing, as though all his reasons are for naught and hilarious to boot. Thranduil’s mouth turns down in a frown. He does not like to be mocked, least of when he is trying to do the right thing. “That’s what’s bothering you?” Tauriel asks, still chuckling a little. “Sire, I hate to have to disabuse you of your notion of my purity, but I am no maid.”

Thranduil feels his mouth fall open in a most unkingly gape. She could not have stunned him more if she had spontaneously declared she was actually a man. “How?” he manages to ask. “Who? Was it consensual? Was it – an elf?” Tauriel scowls at him. This whole topic of conversation makes him feel as eloquent as an elfling of fifty.

“Well, it wasn’t a dwarf,” she retorts tartly. “Must we really speak of this?”

“You began it,” Thranduil counters. Tauriel gasps in astonishment.

“I began it? You were the one brooding over the small matter of my virginity.” Thranduil winces. The dwarf Kíli’s vulgarity has rubbed off on her, for all they spent a short amount of time together. He does not like to hear things spoken of in such plain terms. Yet not knowing is far too dangerous.

“Tell me,” Thranduil commands, uncertain if he truly wants to know or not. If she was dishonoured against her will, he needs to know in order to strike down the knave who had disgraced her.

Tauriel raises her eyes skyward as if in a mute appeal for patience. “It was some years ago,” she begins reluctantly. “Captain Saeledhel resigned his post and advised me that he would be putting my name forth as his replacement.” Tauriel takes a moment to shift on the chair, her fingers tight on the stem of her wineglass. “I knew there was a choice before me. To stay a regular guard and someday hope to have a family of my own, or to devote my life to service of the realm. In truth, there was no real decision to be made. I knew that if I was granted the great honour of serving as guard captain, I could not turn it down.”

“But how did that lead to your – that is, to say –” Tauriel smiles at his fumbling.

“I have never seen you lost for words before,” she remarks. “I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I thought, what is the point of waiting until marriage if I never intend to be wed? I knew someone who had an interest in me. I informed him I would not be amiss to taking him up on his offer. The rest – the rest is none of your concern.” She eyes him for a moment. “You look as though you are in physical pain.”

Not quite, but it was close. A horrific thought has just occurred to Thranduil, one so offensive he can barely spit out the words. “Please say it was not my son who took to bed with you,” Thranduil says through clenched teeth. Thankfully, Tauriel looks appropriately horrified at the suggestion.

“Of course not!” Thranduil breathes a sigh of relief. “This was long ago. He barely knew me then.”

“Then who?” Thranduil cannot help but ask, and Tauriel sighs.

“I regret the turn the conversation took, to bring us to this moment,” she mutters. “You do not need to know. All that matters is that it was someone safe.”

Thranduil considers a moment, before the only possible answer comes to him. “Ah. Saeledhel. Of course.” Tauriel tenses, but after a moment she merely shrugs as if to brush it aside.

“I trusted him, I found him moderately attractive. More importantly, I knew he would never speak of what occurred and that likely he would never return to the Greenwood. He intended to live out the remainder of his days in Lothlorien with his daughter. My indiscretion was safe.” Tauriel hesitates for a moment, but cannot restrain herself. She says all in a rush, “Are you still so afraid Legolas and I will pledge ourselves to one another and the purity of your line will be besmirched?”

Thranduil does not reply. In truth, that particular thought has not even occurred to him. The source of his dismay is that, if he indeed ever takes Tauriel to bed, would he be only following in the steps of his son before him? The thought is nauseating beyond measure. He’ll need another glass of wine – nay, another bottle – to continue on in the face of that thought.

“So you see,” Tauriel says, “I have known physical love before. Let us discuss the true reason for your newfound sense of _propriety_.” She fixes him with a harsh glare, one that looks vaguely familiar; he thinks she might have stolen it from _him_. He tops up her glass and sits back down. “I am, as you have said so often, not worthy of a Sindar elf such as yourself. Rest assured I have no designs on your throne. I am aware you have had a wife, and that she was your queen.”

He can’t help it: Thranduil flinches when she mentions his wife. He wants to explain, but Tauriel’s eyes are already hardening into chips of malachite. She thinks that he recoils from her, when it is so much the opposite. “Yes, we would never marry,” he says, feeling an ache begin at the base of his skull and start to rise. “As part of my role as king, I may be obliged to terminate any association between us with little or no warning.”

“So I would be as little more than a concubine,” Tauriel says bitterly. “Very well. I accept those terms, on the proviso that I am allowed to come and go as I choose. You would hold no more power over me as my lover than you would otherwise.”

“You cannot be serious,” Thranduil exclaims. “Why would you want to leave?” Tauriel regards him with something like pit.

“To see the world. To be a part of it,” she replies. “I am not created as you are, to stay in one place all my life.” He rubs his temple.

“I am the king,” he reminds her. “I must stay and oversee my realm.” Tauriel rolls her eyes; another uncouth behaviour.

“You have a dozen elves in this palace alone who could act as regent in your stead, were you to leave,” she informs him. “You cling to this place as a shield.” Her eyes widen as she says it; perhaps she guesses she has gone too far, but she is too bold to take back her words. Thranduil clenches his fists on the table and speaks through gritted teeth.

“I would not expect the likes of you to understand,” he growls. “You know nothing of duty. You fled at the first sight of someone who was not too ugly and would have you.” Now it is his turn to rue his words.

“I wonder you can bear to speak to, or touch, or kiss the likes of me,” she snarls. “Since I am so offensive to you, how can you bear my presence?”

“With great difficulty,” Thranduil replies. Tauriel’s eyes narrow.

“Oh? So I am fit for a tumble between the sheets, but not to pledge myself above my station, and to be grateful that you can merely endure my company?”

Thranduil tries not to grind his teeth, and fails miserably. he has the distinct feeling he is being allowed just enough rope to hang himself with. “You are twisting my words,” he says as though every syllable has been torn from him unwillingly. “That is not what I meant.”

Tauriel is shaking her head. “How is it that we are contemplating anything more than this, when we can barely spent five minutes in one another’s presence without coming to blows?” Wryly, Thranduil concedes she has a point.

“Perhaps that is the very source of our regard for one another,” Thranduil replies. “We differ greatly, and find points of common interest in between those differences.”

“Or perhaps,” Tauriel counters, “the poets are right when they say that great hate is the other side of the coin that is great love.” She hesitates a moment. “I am not ready to be in love with anyone,” she admits. “My grief is still too fresh. But I like to be with you.” She reaches out and twines her fingers through his.

“My grief is not so fresh,” Thranduil replies. “Yet it wounds me every moment as though it was a new hurt. Your presence does not alleviate it. But it helps, some.”

“So we help each other,” she says. “And if anything else comes of it –”

Thranduil remembers that last kiss, and is certain something will come of it if they continue to spend time together. She is the first in so long to place no expectations on him. He does not have to be a king with her. It is a luxury, after so many years of putting his kingdom first. _She_ is a luxury, the kind of gift jealously guarded so that robbers may not steal it away in the night.

“If anything else comes of it,” Thranduil says, tilting Tauriel’s chin up to meet his eyes. “Then we will weather it.”

She nods, and almost nervously she brushes his lips with her own. She has to lean up and he has to lean down but it is not so terrible, having to adapt. Perhaps it will be the making of him. Or perhaps it will merely help him to find some peace.

For the first time in so long, he does not mind not knowing the future.


	7. A Fleeting Glimpse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been centuries since Thranduil had sex, and even then it was for procreation alone. Tauriel, on the other hand, has a few more modern ideas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have no idea how hard I tried to write masterful, sexy Thranduil. But every time I tried, all I ended up with was this. I will have to save the masterful stuff for later.

Once the ice is broken, he finds it almost impossible to return to the way things were before. Thranduil had frozen nearly every iota of himself to survive the loss that might have destroyed a weaker being, but Tauriel has brought heat into him almost from the very beginning. The gentle warmth of pity for an orphaned child, the faint pride as he watched her become a peerless warrior, and later the anger she roused with her talk of the world outside and the slowly waking contempt in her eyes. What right has _she_ to be contemptuous of him? It would wake in him an ire that could last for weeks, especially when she would return from excursions into the forest with dirt on her face and leaves in her hair, and a conspiratorial smile that matched the one on his son’s face. She infuriated him.

And now she sets him aflame with a different kind of heat, one he has not known in a very long time. For all he is assured of his superiority in most matters, affairs of the bedroom have been affairs unexplored since the death of his wife. Oh, he could have taken lovers, but before Tauriel there had been no one that pierced the veil of that unendurable grief. He had cut himself off from any contact remotely physical, even when it came to his son. _Especially_ when it came to his son. As a child Legolas had run into either of his parents’ arms without qualm, tiny face bright with glee. How long has it been, he wonders, since he held his son against his breast? A lifetime, even by elvish standards.

The decision is made without either of them speaking of it. Some days after he attempted to end their _liaison_ (and only succeeded in making it stronger), he finds Tauriel reading in the library. Locating her is significantly aided by the note slipped under his door sometime in the night previous: _the library, two hours past noon_. She looks up as he approaches, a smile breaking over her face, and automatically she rises, as though standing to attention. He has noticed that often in her.

“A risky place for a meeting,” Thranduil observes, but Tauriel shakes her head.

“Wood Elves are not overly fond of books and the head librarian is at his midday meal. As I understand it, he rarely returns from said meal without overindulging in whatever wine they are serving in abundance in the dining hall.”

“Is that so,” Thranduil murmurs, filing that useful piece of information away for later. “You had something to discuss, I believe?” Tauriel shifts on her feet, looking for a moment as nothing more than an elfling caught out in mischief.

“I would like to spend the evening with you. If you’re amenable,” she adds quickly. Thranduil lifts an eyebrow.

“We have spent several evenings together without the need for a formal request,” he points out. Tauriel is examining her boots in great depth as though expecting them to up and run away of their own accord. “What makes this one so exceptional?” Tauriel looks up, and Thranduil is rendered speechless for a moment at the seriousness in her face.

“I thought we might spend the evening, and the night, and perhaps even part of the morning,” she clarifies, voice even but a hint of red in her cheeks. “I thought perhaps I would come to you. My quarters are not fit for a king.”

“For all they are within the palace of one,” Thranduil says lightly, and is relieved to see a small smile on Tauriel’s lips. “You will have to make your way with some stealth.”

“I agree,” Tauriel says, and is it flattering himself, to imagine she sounds a little breathless? “It would not do to be seen.”

“I will expect you at seven, then. I must go before my inebriated librarian sees me.”

 

At precisely seven o clock a knock sounds at the door. It would make a liar of him to pretend he has not spend the last few hours on tenterhooks. By Ilúvatar, he had considered what to wear a dozen times. He has settled on trousers and shirt, boots and an overrobe, and it would have been blatant foolishness to have left his crown on. The thing could be as sharp as a thorn.

“Good evening,” he says as Tauriel slips in, cloaked in shadows. For once his warrior maiden is wearing a dress, even if it is her usual green and she is wearing her boots underneath. “You look well.”

“You are too kind,” she replies, and stretches up to kiss him.

Thranduil had thought they might take a glass of wine together, speak of the events of the day. And for all she had specified that she desired to stay the fullness of the night, he had not truly considered it a possibility. Yet she presses her lips to his with a confidence that warms him through. Her mouth is sweet like the honeycakes served in the dining hall for dessert, and she weaves her fingers through the waves of his hair to cradle his head in her hands. It is like being held and being set free, all at once.

He does not know what to do with his hands, what to do with his body. He settles for resting his palms on her hips, but they do not stay there for long. Of their own volition they rise, until his hands are firm on her back and he can feel the fullness of her breasts pressed against his own chest.

“Wait,” Thranduil says suddenly, pulling back from what was shaping up to be a very intriguing kiss. Tauriel lifts an eyebrow, looking remarkably unrattled for someone who had been groping at the ties of her own dress. “There is something I must say.”

“You pick a hell of a time to do it,” Tauriel mutters, and once her acquired crassness would have irked him. Now he merely accepts it as part of her character.

“I have said the unkindest of words to you,” Thranduil begins. Tauriel opens her mouth but he holds up a hand. “Let me finish, I beg of you. I have treated you as inferior and second-rate. This was wrong of me. You are worthy of any elf in my kingdom and beyond, a treasure and a resource to my realm and – and. You mean a great deal to me, also.” He finishes his little speech on rather a lame note, he thinks, but he must have done all right because Tauriel is not hitting him with something. Rather, she is staring at him as though he has grown a second head. He gingerly touches his neck just to make sure he hasn’t.

Finally she seems to come round. “I accept your apology in the spirit it was offered,” she says gravely and more than a little formally. “Your prudence is a credit to your kingdom and to your rule.”

“Thank you,” Thranduil replies.

“Now come here,” Tauriel commands, and he is powerless in the face of her certainty. She kisses harder now, gripping the front of his shirt in her hands, pushing his robe to the floor. And it would be a lie to say that he does not kiss her back as fervently. Not when she tastes like forgiveness and grace and feels so _damn good_ , after too long of being alone and without touch.

As the king, his chambers boast a sitting room, a bedroom, a dressing room, and a room strewn with papers and cluttered with scrolls on dusty desks. He takes Tauriel by the hand and leads her down the corridor into his bedroom. Behind him, he hears a muffled curse, and turns to find Tauriel with her hand over her mouth.

“Surely you do not find my chambers _that_ ostentatious,” Thranduil says tartly. Tauriel removes her hand.

“My apologies. It just dawned on me anew that you are – well. That you are a king.”

“I do not know how you could manage to forget,” Thranduil replies with some dignity. Tauriel shrugs.

“One does not kiss a king. One does not take to bed with a king, unless one is a queen or of some high rank. Certainly not a Silvan traitor.” Thranduil takes a deep breath, all of his arousal fading.

“I have already stated,” he says through gritted teeth. “I regret my former insults.” Tauriel smiles.

“And I have forgiven you,” she replies. “It is merely a great deal to become accustomed to.” But there is definite playfulness in her eyes, and Thranduil steps closer, taking her in his arms.

“How may I _accustom_ you to this newfound path we find ourselves on?” he inquires archly, and Tauriel’s little smile becomes a full grin of pure mischief.

“I wonder,” she says innocently, and leans up to kiss him again.

A world of time later, he is seated on the edge of his bed, his Silvan lover standing between his legs. It is easier, considering she is smaller than he is, and he finds he rather likes the reversal. She breaks away for a moment, and he is gratified to see her chest heaving, her eyes wide and dark with arousal.

“Don’t be nervous,” Tauriel says, and Thranduil barks out a sharp laugh.

“I am not nervous,” he replies, and Tauriel looks down. He follows her gaze to where his hands have knotted tightly in the sheets.

“It has been a long time,” Tauriel states baldly, and Thranduil only just manages not to flinch. “I do not wish for this to be an occasion of apprehension for you. I would have you feel only pleasure.”

“It is merely,” Thranduil rasps, “that this is not the way of our people. To engage in such activities without the sacrament of marriage –”

“Is no crime,” Tauriel interrupts. Thranduil glares at her, and she glares right back. “It is not. We are harming no one. And at the end of all things I do not expect to be the one standing beside you when the world is made anew. Nor do I think your queen would wish for you to spend the intervening years alone. If you love someone,” Tauriel says softly, tilting his chin up to meet his eyes, “you do not wish for them to be alone.” Thranduil wants to believe her. Wants to sink into the sweetness she inspires in him. And yet.

“What about – about children?” he asks weakly. Tauriel’s eyes flash.

“Did you not say we would weather all that comes?” she asks. “There are ways to avoid having children.”

“If you are speaking of the potions of charlatans,” Thranduil says heatedly, “then you are mad, and cruel to boot." Tauriel raises her eyes upwards as if pleading for patience.

“I am not speaking of ending a child’s life before it has begun,” she says evenly. “Let me show you something. Lie back.” Thranduil is not accustomed to taking orders, but there is only gentleness in her voice. “Wait.” She pushes the robe off of his shoulders, placing it on a nearby chair, and comes back to the bed. She aligns herself along the length of him, her legs falling to either side, and her kiss is inexorable; he has no choice but to give in.

Her lips go lower, to suckle at the pulse point of his throat, to nibble at his collarbone. Tauriel unbuttons his shirt and he finds he does not mind, and she butterflies kisses down, down, ever lower. Through a pleasant haze Thranduil feels her unlace his breeches and take him in hand. The sensation is so acute, so shocking, that his head falls back and he cannot bring himself to tell her to stop.

“You have done that before, I think,” he says as she moves her hand in a steady rhythm. Tauriel’s smile is all teeth and victory.

“I have done many things before,” she replies, and lowers her head. Thranduil feels something wet lick a stripe from the base of him all the way to the tip. The feel of it goes all the way through him like the reverberation of a bowstring.

“What are you doing?” Thranduil asks, peering down at her. “What could you possibly – oh, gods.” Any god will do, by any name. Her _mouth_ is there, soft and warm and doing things utterly unconceived off in all his long years.

How long it goes on, he does not know. Yet he senses the end approaching and tries to signal this to Tauriel. She pulls away for a moment – he winces at the loss of the contact – and says, “It’s all right.”

It is all the permission he needs. He slides his hand into the auburn waves of her hair, feels the little knobbly braids between his fingers, and gasps out a noise that may be _yes_ or _no_ or _please_ , but is nobody’s name. It is the first release he has had in centuries, and the force of it whites out his vision and for a few moments he cannot breathe. But through it all Tauriel is there, his free hand held tightly in hers, and as he comes down from that impossible high she tucks him gently back into his trousers and slides up to lie beside him.

“I did not know such things were possible,” Thranduil says, when his breath returns to him. Tauriel makes a small noise that is neither agreement nor disagreement nor judgment. “Someday you will tell me where you learned them.” She heaves a sigh, but is not an unhappy one. More thoughtful, and perhaps a trifle resigned.

“Someday,” Tauriel agrees. “But not today.” She is _snuggling_ , there is no other word for it, into his side. She is still fully dressed and he is lying there with his shirt open like a debauched fool, but she does not seem to mind.

“Hmm.” There is an exquisite quietness in his mind. The grief is still there, and he knows it will come back stronger than ever with guilt as its companion, but for now it is distant and far away. “I will return the favour,” Thranduil says, relishing the weight of her at his side, and he feels her shake her head.

“It was no favour,” she replies. “Nor service with expectation of being returned. But I. I look forward to it regardless.”

“You may have to guide me,” Thranduil says very quietly, because he is a king and he does not need guidance, except perhaps in this. Tauriel smiles up at him.

“I do not intend to go anywhere,” she replies, and it is a promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay boys and girls, I need a bit of help. As far as I know, Thranduil's wife isn't named in Tolkien. Any suggestions for what I should call her? I'm shit at picking out names for characters.


	8. The Time That Is Given Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel and Thranduil enjoy one another's company. Basically what you've come to expect from me: angst, talking, and sex.

Thranduil is woken by a soft voice and a hand shaking his shoulder. “Thranduil. Wake up. Wake up, you fool of a king.”

“I heard that,” he says drowsily, but sits up already taking stock of his surroundings. Too many years fighting in wars, he thinks in resignation. Tauriel is there, and the events of the previous night come flooding back. His cheeks begin to heat up in anticipation. “Tauriel –”

“No time,” she says urgently. “It is only a little while until dawn. The guard will be changing over soon, and the earliest of risers will already be awake. I must go.”

“Of course you must,” Thranduil replies, but is pleased to see that she would not leave without waking him. To have awoken tangled in his own sheets and alone would have stung him. “Go, then.” Tauriel smiles, a beautiful thing in the faint light of a candle by the bed.

“Good morning,” she says, leaning down and pecking him quickly on the lips. “You kick in your sleep.”

And she is gone.

 

He tends to the duties of his realm. When one of his councillors makes a foolish statement (which happens more than he would like), the usual tongue lashing is foregone in place of a raised eyebrow and a mild, “Don’t be an idiot.” He refuses to ascribe to the notion that the love making (of a sort) of the night before has been the reason for his good humour throughout the day. Nor does the expected guilt appear. Why should it? He has done no wrong. Tauriel was right when she said that his lovely, animated wife would not expect him to remain alone for all the years until he joined her. And Tauriel does not labour under the delusion that she is first in his affections. His kingdom and his son will always come first and Tauriel respects that, respects _him_.

There is a certain excitement in the knowledge of a forbidden romance. Is this what Tauriel felt at first for the dwarf, before the trueness of her love burnt away such trivialities? He cannot help but wonder. It is not so important. He cannot look back, cannot return to times and places long gone. There is only now, and Tauriel.

They lie on his bed that evening. She comes under cover of darkness and tells him stories of her day. Practising with the guards, accidentally cracking someone’s rib with the point of her practise sword. Sometimes he thinks that for all he tried to teach her manners and grace, she is still the wild daughter of the forest that ran away to see the world. He holds her in his arms and yet feels as if he is the one enveloped.

“I want to kiss you,” he says. Tauriel arches an eyebrow.

“You’ve been kissing me,” she deadpans, and Thranduil does the kingly equivalent of rolling his eyes. (Flicking them daintily skyward, that is.) Her lips are swollen and red, her hair in disarray. Thranduil can only imagine that he looks similar. Tauriel seems to take a perverse delight in mussing his hair.

“Don’t play the fool. You know what I mean. Where I mean,” he elaborates, and Tauriel smiles, although the expression soon falls into shadow.

“There is something else, first, that I must speak with you about.”

“Do go on,” Thranduil says lightly, touching the red fire of her hair. “You have my undivided attention.”

“Last night,” Tauriel says quietly while very determinedly looking away from him, and Thranduil stiffens. Not at her words, but at the careful tone of her voice. Careful, and beneath that something else he cannot name. “You said, beloved. _A'maelamin._ ”

“I do not recall,” Thranduil replies, his words as wary as Tauriel’s had been. She shifts beside him, allowing only a little more space between them, but it is as if a chasm has been opened up.

“As you were falling asleep. My lord –” She stops herself, but the damage is done. A moment ago he was lying beside someone he held dear, if not so dear as others. Now it is as though a captain of the guard lies beside him, in full armour impenetrable to his hands, for all the good touching her might do. “Forgive me. Thranduil.”

“State your piece and be done with it,” he says levelly.

“I am not your beloved,” Tauriel says softly. “It might be best if I go.”

Once, he would have let her go. Would have built a wall of his pride and her doubts as high as the stars themselves, and never crossed the heights of its unforgiving ramparts. He was wiser then, or perhaps more foolish, but no matter now. No amount of grief and tormenting himself will bring her back.

“I called her Minaives,” he says softly, almost too softly to hear himself. Tauriel goes rigid beside him, and he does not know if this is the right path to take. Only that it is the only one he could bear. “That was the Epessë I gave her, when we married. So she would know she would be first in my affections. Always.”

“That’s lovely,” Tauriel murmurs, and it recalls Thranduil to himself. He turns away, swiping a hand roughly over his eyes. He laughs, low and bitter like the dregs of bad wine.

“I should have called her Beredil,” he mutters. “If only I had known what was to come.”

“Do not devalue her,” Tauriel says quietly, and Thranduil’s hand tightens on hers.

“I would never,” he replies in horror. Tauriel squeezes his hand.

“Good. I cannot be her for you,” she tells him. “I will not.”

“I would never expect you to be,” he retorts. “You could not be.” She is not offended by his bluntness.

“In the dark, someone can be many things they are not,” Tauriel replies. Thranduil touches his cheek out of reflex, and feels a dark swell of anger from deep within him. All her talk of darkness and sight, and yet she has never gazed upon the true horror of his form. He reaches over, makes sure there is plenty of light, and looks her in the eyes.

“There is something I want you to you to see,” he tells her, and allows the glamour to fall.

She does not recoil, to her credit. Her eyes widen and her free hand reaches out as if to touch him before it falls away. Her lips are parted but her breathing is not disturbed; he has learned, over the years, all the nonverbal signs that people display when they are repulsed by him.

“The serpents of the north,” Tauriel says slowly. Thranduil nods, and feels the ruined flesh pull and tug unnaturally.

“Long ago,” he replies. “It will never heal.”

“Why are you showing me now?” she asks. Thranduil smiles and is well aware it is a dread thing, half elf and half fire creature born from horror and death.

“Perhaps I am hoping you will run away screaming,” he replies sardonically. Something tense in Tauriel’s face relaxes, and she moves closer to him. Thranduil eyes her warily. This is not what he was expecting.

“Before I met Kíli, I served you for many years,” Tauriel murmurs. “I saw many wounds. I saw men be cut in two before I could help them, elves with arrows where their eyes should be. There is very little I fear when it comes to the scars that fate cuts into us. Thranduil,” she says, and puts her hands on his face, “I do not fear you.”

There is a burning and a stinging in his eyes. Thranduil wants to tell her to stop, but more he wants her to never finish.

“Whether you go about burned or unburned, whether you show your face to me unscathed or touched by fire, I will not look away.”

Tauriel rests her palm on his cheek, on the wound even that Thranduil’s wife could not bear to look upon, let alone touch, and that is what makes the tears fall at last.

It is shameful and weak, but he cannot stop. He shifts as if to move away and Tauriel is like lightning, keeping him by her side, pulling him close until his face is pressed into the crook of her neck. She murmurs words that fall like petals from a flower in full bloom, for all he can barely hear them.

“What you must think of me,” he manages to say, and Tauriel’s lips move in a silent invocation against his brow.

“That you are the strongest being I know.”

 

Later, much later, after the tears have dried, there is another sort of release in his rooms. “You do not have to,” Tauriel claims. “We could try again another time.” Thranduil, however, refuses to allow her to mollycoddle him.

“Show me what to do,” he commands, and reluctantly Tauriel sits up.

“To begin with, I need to remove my breeches,” she replies. “Otherwise you might find certain things inaccessible.” Her boots have been long since abandoned. “And the rest, as well, while you’re at it.” Slowly, he pulls off every item of clothing until, but for her breeches, she is bare. Her breasts are white and full, the softest things he can recall touching for a long time.

“Put your mouth on me,” Tauriel breathes, and it is the first order he submits to without a fight in the longest time. He takes the swell of one nipple into his mouth and Tauriel sighs, her body relaxing in a long line of feminine flesh. For a time that is enough, switching from one breast to the other, but Tauriel grows restless underneath him, enough so that she grabs Thranduil’s hand and presses it hard between her legs.

“Impatient,” Thranduil taunts her lightly, and she responds by kicking her breeches into his face. “Impatient and rude,” he chuckles, intending to tease her some more, but all thought falls out of his head at the sight of her, completely nude and as entrancing as some will of the wisp sent to eternally torment him.

“You were about to say something else?” she prompts him, and in retaliation he slides one finger against the slickness of her centre. “Oh, yes. Never mind.”

“Better and better,” he retorts, examining the landscape before him and determining how best to proceed. _Like going into battle,_ he muses, and has to hide his smile. The hair around her sex is darker than that on her head, to his surprise, and gingerly he touches one little curl with the tip of his finger.

“Are you just going to look at it all night?” Tauriel challenges, and Thranduil’s competitive instincts kick in. He hooks her legs over his shoulders and laves his tongue against the tight bud at the top of where her flesh becomes pink and slick, and Tauriel jerks as though he’s struck her with a hammer. “There,” she says on a moan, brushing his hair back from his eyes, anchoring her fist just behind his ear. He hums in acknowledgment and she bucks against the hard grip he has on her thighs, keeping them up out of the way.

“Thranduil,” she says, and he considers how attractive his name is when it is moaned at him. “Look at me.” He does, but she shakes her head. “Let the glamour drop,” she says breathlessly. “I want to see your face between my thighs.”

“It is not a pretty sight, in case you have forgotten,” he warns her, and is rewarded for his thoughtfulness by a hard kick in his side from her bare foot. “Very well.” He keeps eye contact with her as he lets his true face show through, and rather than flinching away, she only lets her head fall back when she is close, he can tell, by the way she is trembling and twitching. Thranduil redoubles his efforts and, on a whim, curls his fingers inside of her. Tauriel gasps and arches off the bed, her hands in his hair, the scent of her all he can smell and taste.

“Smug, arrogant king,” she says when she gets her breath back. Thranduil smirks at her.

“You didn’t appear to be complaining. Tauriel, what are you doing?” She is standing, drawing him up with her, and in a flash she goes to her knees on the stone floor. “Get up,” Thranduil says, half serious, half laughing.

“Hush already,” she replies, her fingers working at his laces. “I want to.”

He is hard already from the press of her thighs around his head and the noises she’d made as he’d thrust his tongue into her until she was quivering and begging. By the time she wraps her lips around him he is halfway there, holding her head in his hands like the most precious of jewels. Thranduil closes his eyes for a moment, lets nothing exist but sensation and need, and opens them again. He looks down, sees the fall of her red hair and the braids he’d put in them, the whiteness of her skin and the glint of her eyes as she looks _up_ at him, up and up and _up_ –

Afterwards, they curl together in the warmth against the coolness of the night, and when he opens his eyes in the morning, she is still there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to elven naming conventions, elves have several different types of names. See here http://www.realelvish.net/valinornaming.php for an infinitely more elegant explanation than I could devise.


	9. More In You Of Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel and Thranduil are adorable. Really, that's the only description I can think of.

Thranduil wakes first. There is a pressure on his chest and a leg thrown over his body, the slenderness of Tauriel pressed up against him. There is only darkness coming from the small window, but not for nothing are elven eyes famed for their acuity. Thranduil can see almost perfectly in the darkness, the auburn waves of Tauriel’s hair, the peace in her face as she slumbers.

There is a sharp sense of unreality to the situation Thranduil finds himself in. outside of the past two nights, he has not shared a bed with anyone for a great many years. It surprises him a little that he can even manage to sleep when there is someone beside him. The weight of her head on his chest both reassures and terrifies him; it is both too much and not enough. He cannot comprehend the closeness of Men, the way they sleep sometimes five or six to a bed, siblings all packed in together and husband and wife sharing their bed with the youngest. He had learned this, in his youth, travelling with his father. Oropher had not been the sort of king to rule from afar. He had taken his son on journeys with him right up until the final journey he had not returned from.

“What is it?” Tauriel asks, and he is not surprised that she has awoken, roused by the sudden tension within him. Tauriel is one of the most empathetic beings he has ever known. Her eyes are bright like coins, and she shifts a little to look up at him.

“Merely dark thoughts,” Thranduil replies. “Not worth the breath it takes to speak them aloud.” He feels something smack his arm lightly.

“It does not become you, to be foolish,” she says. “Speak of what troubles you. Let me help to lighten the load.”

He misses the days where he could silence her with just a look. Where she would not have dared to strike him even in jest, nor would she have spoken to him with such liberty to express her views, regardless of his opinion. But those days were also the times of deep sorrow, of endless grief, and he must weigh Tauriel’s freedom with her words against the impenetrable blackness of that era.

“It is uncomfortable to wake, and find another beside me,” he says at last, after a period of silence. Tauriel has the enviable gift, he has noticed, of being able to tell the difference between silence as refusal and the quiet that accompanies thought before speech. “It has been too long.” The sky has lightened a fraction, he notices. Dawn will be upon them soon.

“It is unfamiliar to me also,” Tauriel replies. “Since my return I have found it difficult to find sleep, in the soft beds and safety of a place not constantly beset by orcs.” Not for the first time he wonders what she truly saw while hunting with his son and the Dúnedain. Whether her absence was fuelled by the vengeful desire to bring death to the race that had slaughtered the young dwarf she had loved. “I will become accustomed to it once more.” She peers up at him; he can see her completely clearly now. “As you will, should this continue.”

“I would have it continue,” he replies quickly. “You are…” But he finds he cannot continue. He is too set in his ways to mouth sweet words like an elfling. Even the thought of just informing her of his great regard for her is a prospect he finds distasteful. He is no Man, to find it easy to speak the words in his heart. Nor does he have his son’s way with others. You are dear to me, he would say, if he could, and so much more besides. But fortunately, Tauriel understands what he cannot say.

“I should go,” she says. “It is nearly dawn.”

“You do not have to,” Thranduil replies. Tauriel smiles, and laces her fingers through his own.

“Would I could stay here with you until noon,” she declares. “But I have promised some of the junior guardsmen I would look over their practise this morning. Their skill with the twin swords is… well, ‘woeful’ is too cruel a word, I suppose. Lacking, perhaps?” She slips out of bed and starts hunting around for her clothes.

“Then it is fortunate they have a skilled teacher,” Thranduil replies, enjoying the sight of her willowy form. But she is different from many other elven maidens, and the difference is plain to see even through her clothes. She is muscled from many hours of training and fighting; rather than detract from her feminine beauty, he feels, her strength only adds to it. No one could call Tauriel weak.

“Some teachers are more skilled than others,” Tauriel states. “I am only a fledgling in the art of the twin blades. But others, far more skilful than I, could teach them so much…” Thranduil merely gazes at her. He is well aware of her passion for his skill with weaponry, how she thinks he would be an excellent tutor for the guards, but it is an issue on which they have agreed to share differing opinions. Nevertheless, it does not stop Tauriel from dropping hints whenever she feels like it.

“Be off with you,” he says. “I have much to do today.” Never mind that he is lying nude under a sheet while his young lover dresses and leaves with the dawn.

“Oh, I know you do,” Tauriel says carelessly, lacing up her boots. “A king’s work is never done.” She leans down and kisses him goodbye, and silently makes her way out of his rooms.

 

The light of the early morning is still weak as Thranduil makes his way to the guard’s training area. He appears on the edges of the open space like a shadow, and enjoys the way knowledge of his presence slowly trickles through the assembled guards. In twos and threes, they fall motionless under the sternness of his gaze, their heads bowing in respect. Only Tauriel seems unruffled, if a little surprised.

“Continue,” he says with a regal wave of the hand, focussing his attention on Tauriel’s replacement as captain of the guard. “Walk with me,” he says to the much younger elf, who pales and then turns crimson and looks at Tauriel as though hoping she will rescue him. Silently, Tauriel takes the practise sword held out to her and claps her friend on the shoulder.

“Relax, _mellon_ ,” Thranduil hears Tauriel mutter to the other elf. “The king will not bite you.”

“It’s his bark I’m more afraid of,” hisses the other, and Thranduil has to fight to hide a smile before it is seen by all and sundry. It would not do to have his subjects think their king might be in possession of the faintest trace of a sense of humour.

“Tell me of the progress of the junior guardsmen you have recruited,” Thranduil says, and sees Tauriel’s smile out of the corner of his eye.

 

 

Thranduil is walking from the throne room to the office of one of his counsellors when a hand appears from around a corner and drags him into a little used corridor. He’s reaching for a blade even as he recognises Tauriel as his would be abductor.

“Have you gone mad?” he demands. Tauriel’s eyes sparkle with mischief.

“Admit it,” she says. “You came by the training yard just to see me.”

“What nonsense you speak,” Thranduil replies loftily. “To think I would take time out of my busy day to merely eye you from across the courtyard.” He looks down at her. She is still in her practise clothes, her hair tied back in a bundle of braids and loose red locks.

“I’ll not let you go until you admit it,” Tauriel says, fisting her hands in the fabric of his robes. Thranduil arches an eyebrow.

“If it’s a fight you want, you might find yourself woefully outmatched,” he says in his best ‘arrogant king’ voice.

“Not that kind of fight,” Tauriel replies, and leans up to kiss him.

For the second time that day he wonders if she has gone mad. Thranduil seizes her by the arms and drags her out of the reach of his lips. “Anyone could see us!” he hisses, hating the note of panic that has entered his voice. His former guard captain just shrugs.

“So?” she asks, challenge in her tone and arms folded over her chest. She has him backed against a wall, for all he’s holding her fast. For a moment he actively considers her proposal, and then for another moment. And another.

“Wretched creature,” Thranduil rumbles, and in one quick move has reversed their positions until it is Tauriel pressed up against the wall. He kisses her hard, as though trying to punish her for seducing him, and rather than flinch away, she only pushes back harder. He brings his hands up to cradle her face, to cup the back of her neck to bring her closer, and in retaliation she tugs on his hair and bites his lip. It is a battle, for all not one he has fought so often before, and the struggle for dominance ends when he tears his lips away, leaving Tauriel gasping. His breathing is not so even as he would like, either.

“I have a meeting,” he informs her, touching her forehead to his. “You cannot delay me any longer.” She just arches an eyebrow, impossibly young and filled with the optimism and spontaneity that youth entails. It has been so long since Thranduil was young, and her impulsiveness touches something in him that has been dormant for an age. “Perhaps a minute more,” he concedes, and kisses her again.

 

“You are a menace,” he tells the younger elf. They are settled in one of the many rooms in his suite. Thranduil has a glass of wine in one hand and a scroll in the other, an account of recent trade with Dale. Tauriel, in direct contrast, is lying flat on her belly on the floor with a book; at his comment, she just waves a hand at him in dismissal. He cannot see the title. “What are you reading?” Tauriel glances up.

“A book of tales for the young,” she replies. “It is most difficult.”

“How so?” he questions. Tauriel holds up another, smaller tome that previously had been hidden by her elbow.

“It is in Dwarvish. I am translating it, bit by bit.” She hesitates for a moment. “Kíli told me some of these stories when he and his kin were in our dungeons. I would like to learn more.”

“An admirable desire,” Thranduil says softly, and means it. While he himself has no desire to painstakingly translate dwarrow fairy tales into Sindarin, he admires Tauriel’s desire to learn new things. “What have you learned thus far?” Tauriel shrugs.

“They are structured like parables. Each story teaches a lesson. Don’t go down mines on your own. Honour your kin.”

“Do not trust those lying, faithless elves?” Thranduil asks dryly and with more than a little mockery. Tauriel smiles.

“I haven’t got to that part yet.” She sets it aside and rubs her eyes. “I’m going to bed. Are you coming?” Thranduil sighs.

“Regretfully not. I must finish this,” he says, indicating the scroll in his hand. He half expects her to kiss him or leave his chambers, but she does neither. She simply pats him on the hand and wanders off in the direction of his bedroom.

It takes him a while to refocus on the trade matters.

 

Some hours later, Thranduil makes his way to his sleeping quarters. The sight of a red haired, lissome elf maid in his bed gives him pause for a moment. He sits on the edge of the bed and strokes her exposed shoulder lightly. “Tauriel,” he murmurs, but she does not move. He shakes her shoulder a little, and she twitches.

“Yes?” she asks, her voice muffled by the pillow. She turns over, still half asleep but quickly waking up under his touch. “Good evening,” she says lightly. “I assume it is still evening.”

“You are correct,” Thranduil replies. Tauriel nods, her eyes slipping shut again.

“Are you coming to bed?” she asks. Thranduil slips his robe off and folds it neatly over a chair. The rest of his clothes follow and he slides into bed beside her. Before Tauriel, he had never slept bare, but it seems to be becoming a habit.

“Do you sleep nude when you are out in the field?” he asks, and Tauriel kicks him in the leg.

“No. How foolish do you think I am? What if an enemy came across me? Not that I baulk at slaughtering orcs in the nude, but it would leave one’s vulnerable areas quite exposed.”

“Indeed,” he replies, and then says no more. Tauriel’s hand has strayed downwards, giving him plenty of time to pull away if he so desires, and takes him in hand. “Wicked girl,” Thranduil rumbles, and Tauriel shivers beside him.

“I like to hear you speak,” she says with the air of one telling a confession. “Even when you’re being a supercilious nitwit.”

“Duly noted,” Thranduil replies. Tauriel turns over so she is facing him.

“What do you want?” she asks, and perhaps it is part of her enjoying hearing his words, or perhaps she genuinely wants to know. It gives him pause for a moment, and Thranduil lets the silence drag on until he is sure.

“I want to be inside you,” he replies, and there is no mistaking Tauriel’s shudder that time. There will be time for exploring her fascination with his voice, but that will come later.

“We are in perfect agreement,” Tauriel says, and rolls on top of him. She sits back and in one smooth motion takes him deep, her body enveloping him as though made to fit around him. The abruptness of the sensation causes Thranduil to bite back a gasp, and then she starts to move and he gives up on attempting to be stoic when Tauriel is so clearly playing dirty. She leans forward and rests her arms on the top of his bed, using the wooden headboard as leverage. “Good?” she asks, and he has the wherewithal to only nod. Anything more verbose will have to wait.

It seems fitting, the first time this happens that she is atop him, her strong thighs to either side of his body and her lips only a hairsbreadth from his. Her breasts brush his chest and Thranduil sets his hands on her hips, assisting her with his not inconsiderable strength. She seems to like that, if the noises she is making are any indication. Tauriel does not appear to have his reluctance to make noise when in the throes of desire; she moans and the noise goes straight through him like he’s been pierced with one of her arrows.

Tauriel comes first, tight around him and her body shuddering a little through the aftershocks of her pleasure. Thranduil should be shocked, he knows, at the forward way she’s riding him, at her unashamed interest, at the confidence she has in taking the lead. He had never loved his wife this way, never laid underneath her as she took her pleasure from him. Oh, there had been desire in his marital bed, and satisfaction, and under it all the purity of love. But Tauriel is a different being entirely, neither better nor worse, just different. He cannot bring himself to regret that.

He spills into her with his fists clenched in the sheets and her mouth close to his, sharing her breath, the curtain of her hair falling around them both like a shield. He cannot keep silent and the name he murmurs is her name, for this is a realm entirely unexplored save for with Tauriel, and there is no mistaking her for another.

It is only later, when she is asleep and he is almost so, that the concept of possible children resulting from the act enters his mind. It is as though a shard of ice has perforated the hard shield around his heart. Common sense dictates, he is aware, that the likelihood of a child is exceedingly unlikely. Elves are slow to conceive in a way that no other race seems to be. Given their longevity, Thranduil supposes it makes sense for his race to have difficulty and sometimes outright impossibility when it comes to making children. Really, there is no need for him to ruminate on this disquieting thought, he tells himself, and attempts to will himself to sleep.

The secret he dares never breathe aloud is that the thought of Tauriel bearing his child is not entirely unpleasant. Oh, it would be a disaster for his kingdom and it would mean outright ruin for Tauriel to bear a child when she is unmarried. Yet the thought of tiny, defiantly red haired children is a thought he finds hard to clear from his mind. Legolas had been the sweetest babe, he remembers, with tiny hands that loved to pull on his father’s hair. It would surprise his subjects, Thranduil knows, at how much he loved his son. At how he had never wanted to be parted from his wife and his child when Legolas was small. Every duty of his kingdom was a chain that dragged him away from the place he so wanted to be.

 _Ada_ , Legolas would say, and Thranduil would take his son in his arms and burn pleasantly under the weight of his wife’s fond expression. He had always thought he loved his son so greatly because the boy resembled his mother. Because the child was a living embodiment of their love for one another. The thought that perhaps Thranduil simply likes children is a disquieting one, but not so disquieting as the idea that Tauriel’s children appeal to him because he _loves_ his former captain…

Thranduil stares up at the ceiling, and wonders when his world got so complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you gorgeous creatures wanted to know what Beredil means, from the previous chapter. It is a derivative of a feminine form of 'Doomed One'. Basically, Thranduil is being bitter. For more information, see http://www.realelvish.net/sindarin_names_misc.php


	10. Dreams Spring To Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thranduil dreams, Tauriel is out kicking orc arse, and Legolas drops in.

Thranduil does not often dream, but when he does, he has found, the visions come like a rain of arrows, annihilating all in their path.

_Tauriel is covered in dust from the road, a bloody scratch along one cheek. She smiles faintly at him, and Thranduil cannot stand still, cannot remain in one place when she is here and real and his –_

_He hardly notices he is moving until the distance between them is miniscule and he could reach out and hold her in his arms, until all he has to do to kiss her is lean down._

_Tauriel’s lips are the same as ever, but something is not right. Thranduil turns away from her to see the wondering expressions on the faces of so many of his subjects and feels a sense of slow doom, that they have seen him thus._

Blink.

_The moment he sees the group of ragged returning guards, he knows something has gone horribly wrong. More than half their number are missing, and between them the remainder carry crude stretched made of cloaks and tree limbs._

_“What has happened?” he demands of the guard leading the group. The young elf’s face is pale, his eyes red from weeping._

_“Orcs,” the elf replies, a haunted expression coming over his face. “There were so many.” Thranduil frowns._

_“Where is Tauriel?” he asks. “She was the leader of this expedition, was she not?”_

_The younger elf – Faelon, Thranduil recalls dimly – pales further, and gestures to one of the stretcher carriers. “My lord, she did not –” Faelon’s voice breaks off and he turns away, but Thranduil has no more need of him, not now._

_Tauriel’s face is still in death in a fashion it is not even when she sleeps. Her braids have unravelled but even her hair cannot hide where half her skull has been bashed in. Thranduil had not seen his wife’s body after she had died. It was lost in the dirt and filth of Angmar, and though he would send company after company to seek her corpse there, they would ever return empty-handed. For centuries after, Thranduil had always expected her to appear around a corner, smiling and whole, before memory and reason overruled that faint, persistent hope._

_He had not thought anything could be worse than that. Yet here Tauriel lies, white and cold in death as she had never been in life. Thranduil feels the weight of hundreds of eyes on him, and for the first time does not care. He gathers her ruined body into his arms, careful not to jostle the hideous wound on the back of her head, and does not move for a very long time._

Blink.

_The expedition is returning, and like many of his subjects, Thranduil waits to greet them. It is the honourable thing to do, to welcome them home after they have risked their lives for his realm. And he has personal motive, as well; to see a flash of red hair and a familiar smile, and later, in his chambers? Well._

_Young Faelon is at the head of the group, one of Tauriel’s many protégés, and a slender elf maid disengages from the throng to run into his arms. Many of the other, older guards have more restrained reunions with their loved ones, but Thranduil cannot see Tauriel. Of course, there will be no impassioned reuniting for them. She will stop in front of him, bow her head briefly, and then look up. “The orcs have been defeated,” she might say, and Thranduil would incline his head. “Well done, guard captain,” he would reply. And later, in the stillness of the night, she would tell him about the brief campaign and take him to bed, and all thoughts of the dullness of her absence would fade from his mind._

_There. Red hair. She is walking some way behind her fellow guards, and there is someone by her side. Even his keen eyes cannot make out who at this distance, but they are short, smaller than Tauriel by far, and… is that a beard?_

_Thranduil remains rooted to the ground in horror as the pair draws closer. Tauriel’s face is filled with a joy so blinding it would be painful to look at, had Thranduil any feeling left in his body. By her side is the young dwarf, Kíli, the one who she had mourned so deeply and with such devotion._

_“What is the meaning of this?” Thranduil finally asks when Tauriel and the dwarf are a scant few yards away._

_“Kíli found us while we were hunting orcs,” Tauriel says, the purity of her happiness painfully evident. “There was a poison on the weapon of the orc Bolg, a toxin derived of the venom of the giant spiders. It causes paralysis and the appearance of death. Both Kíli and his brother woke while their kin were preparing them for burial. They were very weak, and needed much time to recover. But look!” Tauriel gestures to the dwarf, who smiles grimly._

_“Good as new,” Kíli replies. Something excruciating is happening in the general region of Thranduil’s chest. A physical manifestation of emotional torment, he knows, but that does nothing to dispel the newfound agony blooming in his chest._

_“I am happy for you, Guard Captain,” Thranduil says formally, and such is the depth of Tauriel’s distraction that she does not reprimand him for his formality. It is, Thranduil feels, as though the passion between them had never existed. “It appears you finally have everything you want.”_

Thranduil wakes and is shocked to find light pouring through the window. He scrubs a hand over his face wearily, feeling as though he has had no rest at all. Tauriel had left the previous morning with a contingent of guards to weed out orcs that had been attacking travellers through the Greenwood. She had begged and pleaded to go; he can still hear her impassioned pleas. “Orcs killed my parents in much the same way!” she’d said, her eyes wide and imploring. “Please, Thranduil. Let me do what I can. Let me do what I’m good at.”

He’d granted her request. And on the request of current guard captain Lainor, Thranduil had temporarily reinstated Tauriel as captain for the duration of the expedition. “She’s far more experienced that I, my lord, and the guards feel safer when she is at the helm.” How could he argue with that?

Of course, that left him with a different problem. He hesitates to call the sensation worry, or even concern. Merely a nagging, irksome presence that makes him wonder if she is all right. If she is well. If she has died, and he cannot sense it.

 

Thranduil is in his study when there is a knock at the door of his chambers. He calls out for the visitor to enter, expecting a counsellor with some minor issue or perhaps the head of his household. He almost falls of his chair when his son appears in the doorway. Legolas is battered and dusty from the road, but he has at least removed his quiver and knives to come into his father’s presence. Stiffly, Legolas bows his head in deference.

“My lord,” he says with that same sense of rigid propriety, and perhaps Tauriel has been a civilising influence on him, or perhaps it is simply that it has never been so long before since he has seen his son, but Thranduil is in no mood to be proper.

“Legolas,” he breathes in shock, and almost kicks his chair back in his haste to get to his son. Throwing caution to the wind, he embraces his child to him, and Legolas is rigid and confused for only a moment before his arms come up and gingerly pat his father on the back.

 

Thranduil hands his son a wineglass, and sits opposite to the younger elf in one of the armchairs in his sitting room. “I am not here to stay,” Legolas says, and Thranduil nods.

“Of course.” His son studies him for a moment with a familiar, penetrating gaze; Thranduil recognises it as one he has seen often in the mirror.

“Something is different about you,” Legolas pronounces, and Thranduil briefly wonders if he is so transparent that all can read him like a book. Surely not. This is his son, after all.

“I have been attempting to attend to the faults in my character,” he finally replies. “As pointed out by yourself and a former guard captain.” Something softens in Legolas’s face.

“Father,” he says, and a warmth pierces Thranduil all the way through, “in the heat of battle, we can only do as we see fit. There is little time for doubt and recriminations, and to hesitate may cause all to come undone.” Thranduil allows himself a faint smile.

“That may be,” he says. “But you, my son, were not the one to find one of your own kind on the end of your sword, and have to wonder how such a path could come to appear the right one.” Legolas toys with his glass, but he does not drink.

“Tauriel has always been headstrong,” he replies. Thranduil chuckles.

“That is true.” Rallying, he sips from his glass. “Tell me of your travels.”

It is late into the night when Thranduil and Legolas finally run out of things to talk about. Well, Thranduil thinks, Legolas has. There is something preying on Thranduil’s mind, a terrible question he does not know whether he truly wants the answer to. To not know would be worse, to doubt and question, and yet if Legolas replies in the affirmative –

“Legolas,” Thranduil says, and feels himself on the edge of an unknown precipice, “was I so terrible a father?” His son’s eyes widen, and Thranduil feels faintly gratified by the surprise that appears briefly over Legolas’s face.

“Ada, no,” Legolas says in shock, and Thranduil holds out a hand, even as Legolas’s impulsive use of the childhood appellation is heartening to hear.

“Listen to me now. I have demanded blind obedience from you for time without measure. I would not have that continue between us. You are my son, and I would have from you the truth.”

“The truth,” Legolas says slowly. “It is not so easily pinned down. What is best for our people is not always best for the wider world. You have done well by our people, you have kept them safe, but sometimes at the expense of others. Now that I have been out in the world, walked its paths and its valleys, I cannot see that our isolationist ways are to the advantage of all. Perhaps to the advantage to us in the short term, and even in a shade of the long term. But if all the world is devoured around us, then so too will we be devoured. For there are no walls that can repel the deepest of darkness.”

Thranduil is impressed against his own will. At some point, while he was drowning under the suffocating weight of his grief, his son has grown to be wise and capable. “I have no qualms about leaving my realm in your hands when I die,” Thranduil replies. They have never been the most tactile of father and son, for all Thranduil had cradled his son in his arms almost constantly when Legolas had been a babe. Yet Thranduil clasps his son’s hand in his own in the way that Men do, when they meet an equal. He hopes Legolas knows the significance of the gesture.

“You have missed Tauriel by so little,” Thranduil informs his son, to break the sudden tension. “Only yesterday she took a small company into the forest to hunt orcs.” Legolas laughs.

“That sounds like her,” he replies dryly. “But I did not come to see Tauriel.”

“Then who?” Thranduil asks, and Legolas gives him a look that clearly says, Father, you’re so slow. “Oh, you came to see me,” Thranduil realises. “Well. Excellent. Good.” Legolas stops short of rolling his eyes, but it is a near thing. “You are learning uncouth ways amongst the Dúnedain,” Thranduil tells his son. “Soon you will be as bad as –” But he cannot continue. He must not speak too much of Tauriel, lest his son become suspicious.

“As bad as who?” Legolas asks keenly. Thranduil turns away to set his glass on the table, and also to regain his composure.

“As Dwarrows and Men and Valar knows what else,” Thranduil replies dismissively. “Good night, Legolas.”

Legolas is regarding him with that penetrating gaze again, almost as though trying to see past Thranduil’s flesh and into his soul. It would not do for Legolas to realise his father was having an illicit affair with the elf maid Legolas had been so fond of. Still might be so fond of.

“Good night, Ada.”


	11. In This Way, The Battle Was

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble in paradise. Or: Thranduil reels from Legolas' visit and Tauriel gets in the way.

Legolas is fletching arrows quietly, and Thranduil is wrinkling up his nose at the scent of the glue. It is Legolas’s last evening in Mirkwood; he is leaving on the morrow, and Thranduil is loath to spend this last night away from his son, even if Legolas does insist on fletching. It calms him, Thranduil knows, and so he has long since given up feigning interest in his scroll, choosing instead to watch his son at work.

Legolas’s return to the Woodland Realm had been met with jubilation on all levels. The second night of Legolas’s brief visit home, the dining hall had rang bright with the sounds of feasting and talking. It seemed nearly every resident of Thranduil’s halls was present, as well as some from the outlying forests; they all wanted to speak to their prince, to hear his stories. Legolas had been in the thick of the feasting; every elf present had wanted to touch and speak to their prince, to hear the stories of his absence that he seemed loath to tell. Eventually, presumably irritated by the pandering, Legolas had shot a half-pleading, half-amused expression at his father, seated in the highest place in the feasting hall, as yet another simpering nitwit pulled Legolas deeper into unwanted conversation. Scowling, Thranduil had drained his wineglass and dropped it none too carefully onto the table, and rose to his feet.

“Cease your effrontery!” Thranduil had thundered, and for a short while the noise had tapered down. Legolas had taken the opportunity to speak to some of his former fellows among the guard, and Thranduil had settled back into his chair, wineglass firmly in hand. But soon enough the dull roar increased up to and beyond the level it had been before. Legolas had shot a resigned smile to his father, who had merely inclined his head in reply, but it had been enough.

Thranduil had not realised how he missed those soundless communications, the wordless relay of information that had been perfected over many years of silence between his son and Thranduil himself. It is better now, Thranduil thinks, that the walls of silence have broken down between Legolas and himself. He cannot bring himself to regret those long quiet years. But it is Legolas who breaks the comfortable silence that has sprung up between them.

“You have found someone,” Legolas says, and Thranduil’s heart twists in his chest like a small animal caught in a trap. Yet he has been expecting this. Tauriel has wrought so great a change in him, there is no way Legolas could have failed to notice. “Someone to lighten the cares of this world, someone to share your daily joys and sorrows with.”

“I haven’t the faintest understanding of what you mean,” Thranduil replies haughtily, both dismayed at and a little proud of his son’s acuity.

“I think you do,” Legolas says. “Grief has worn you down, given you cares you should never have been forced to endure.” Thranduil waves a hand at his son in dismissal, but Legolas pushes on. “Ada.” This makes Thranduil look up; his son only uses the affectionate childhood moniker when he truly desires his father’s attention. “There is no crime in ceasing suffering.”

“I am not suffering,” Thranduil replies tartly, and Legolas arches an eyebrow in another disturbingly familiar expression. “I will not deign to neither confirm nor deny your allegations, for I see both as beneath me,” Thranduil says airily, and decides to throw all caution to the wind. “Yet I find my interest piqued. In the exceedingly unlikely event that I find someone to spend the reminder of my years with, would you be averse to knowing the truth about such a liaison?” Thranduil is waiting, if not on bated breath, then as close as he can come; that is to say, his respiratory rate slows infinitesimally and he is still like the snake awaiting the prey, waiting to strike.

“Long have I known that the love you bore from my mother was the reason for your coldness,” Legolas says carefully, and Thranduil very admirably does not wince from the clarity of his son’s words. “I do not wish to imply it would be possible for you to replace her. And yet I would not see you left without companionship for all the days left to come. If you were to find such a companion – and I mean that in any sense of the word – then I am no one to judge you.”

“You are not ‘no one’, you are my son,” Thranduil replies, and it must be the right answer because Legolas smiles and shrugs a little. “Your opinion is of the utmost importance to me.”

“It was not always so,” Legolas replies just as carefully as before. Thranduil feels his spine tense uncomfortably.

“I was in error,” Thranduil replies stiffly. “Do you not agree?” Legolas smiles faintly.

“I do agree,” Legolas says with just a hint of sarcasm, and Thranduil uses the hand formerly employed for careless waving to point sternly at his son.

“I have admitted I am not without flaws in my character,” Thranduil says sharply. “That does not entitle you to agree with me.” Thranduil is under the distinct impression that Legolas is hiding a smirk, from the way he lowers his head and his lip is twitching.

“You are right, Ada,” Legolas says, and together they sit in quiet company for some time. “I would like to meet this individual, someday, if you are amenable,” Legolas says, and ice runs through Thranduil’s veins. He should have known this. And yet, like the great flightless birds of myth, he has been content to stick his head in the dirt and ignore the signs. And now he has been plucked from the cool forgiving embrace of the earth and is forced to look up blinking and wild eyed into the heat of the sun. It will not stand.

“You will be the first, Legolas, when the time comes,” Thranduil replies, and bites his tongue against the truth that longs to flow.

 

The patrol returns three days after Legolas departs. Thranduil had watched his son go and now he watches the company of guards return, Tauriel at their head. She is tanned from her time in the sun and Thranduil sees her scanning the assembled elves waiting to reunite with their loved ones. But she does not see him. He made sure of that, viewing the returning company from a small balcony overhead that prevents him from being seen. He is not sure, given the events of the previous days, what he might have done. He sees the subtle way her face changes, from a faint, expectant smile to an expression of tight resignation, and it would make a liar of him to say that he did not feel the reverberation of her disappointment somewhere deep in his chest.

Thranduil manages to stay away from her until the late afternoon. Then, she appears in the throne room like a shadow around a corner. Thranduil is staring into mid-air, contemplating Legolas’s visit and exactly what his son would say were he to know the truth, when Tauriel’s familiar voice breaks the silence. “The guard has returned, my king.” He does not like the sound of his title in her voice at least not like this. That brings to mind the evening in bed the night before she had left; she had referred to him as nothing else except ‘my king’ or ‘my lord’, the faux formality mingled with the humour in her eyes enough to both bewilder and arouse him. The memory makes him cross his legs and attempt to think on other topics.

“So I have seen,” Thranduil replies. Were he less distracted, he would have noticed the faint crease in her brow that signified distress, and the uncommon tightness around her mouth. But he has his own diversions, and they blind him to her.

Tauriel’s report is brief, but thorough as ever. The orcs preying on travellers through the Greenwood have all been destroyed. No loss of life among the guard.

“You are hereby revoked of your temporary role as guard captain,” Thranduil informs her formally. Tauriel inclines her head.

“I would not expect otherwise,” she says lightly. “I take my leave.” She says it with such a smile in her eyes that he knows she will be coming to him later, once the forgiving curtain of night falls down.

“You are dismissed,” Thranduil says blandly, watching the shift of her shoulders under her tunic.

“Good evening, my lord,” she replies, and bows her head in reverence.

“And to you,” he responds, but she is already gone.

 

There is a knock at the door some scant minutes before midnight. He has been waiting her since the sun went down, and with every passing hour his ire had grown. Nor does her appearance help, when he lets her into his chambers. She is flushed with wine and her usual self-possession is just a fraction looser than usual, and her hair is falling down. It takes a great more alcohol to inebriate an elf rather than, say, a Man, and Thranduil is aware of the hours of dedicated drinking it must have taken to render her to such a state. She has been carousing like a common – no, he will not think that word. She has been carousing, and he, the king of this realm, has been left waiting for her. The situation is unendurable.

“You are late,” Thranduil informs her expressionlessly, and Tauriel falls into a chair and smiles up at him. Still there is that undefinable thread of tension in her, and later he will recall it and wonder, but not now.

“The guards wished to celebrate my return to their number,” she replies. Thranduil stiffens, anger filtering through him like water trickling through paper.

“You are not truly one of them,” he says heatedly. “You were their leader again for no more than a fortnight.” Tauriel shrugs.

“So I tried to tell them. But there was drinking games, and song, and tales of valour on the field of battle –”

Thranduil makes a noise that in a less exalted individual might be called a snort. “The field of battle,” he rumbles, and is perversely gratified to see Tauriel’s brow crinkle in confusion at the deep cynicism in his voice. “You cleaned out an orc camp. Let us not be given over to exaggeration.”

“We did not merely speak of our recent campaign,” she replies, and this is the part of the conversation, Thranduil knows, that usually she would start to get irate herself. But wine seems to ease her usual sharp sense of outrage at unfairness. He loathes the affection that rises in him at this contrariness. He should not find her in the least bit enchanting. He should not care for her at all. “What troubles you?” she asks, and if she is infinitely more tranquil now, she has lost none of her perceptiveness.

“Nothing of your concern,” he replies, and Tauriel stands with only a hint of unsteadiness to the motion.

“Then let me help you,” she says, and she is too close, too close, he does not know whether he wants to push her away and draw her into his arms. “You’re beautiful when you’re angry,” she says, and that’s when everything goes wrong.

Thranduil does precisely the wrong thing. She leans in to kiss him, and without thinking he pulls away, feeling his brow crinkle in distaste. Tauriel’s eyes widen for a moment before they narrow dangerously. He knows what she has seen and how she will interpret it. All previous relaxation in her manner is gone, and she has the blank eerie stare of a born hunter in her eye.

“I will ask you again,” she says. “What troubles you?” And for all the former question was gentle and teasing, this one is harsh and full of wounded confusion. He has never drawn away from her before, never been reviled by the thought of her touch. Yet it not truly her he is reviled by. By his own weakness, and foolishness, and the thought of his son’s hurt if he ever learned the truth about the ‘companion’ easing his father’s grief.

“Something has changed,” Thranduil replies, and Tauriel smiles a jagged thing full of contempt.

“You will receive no argument from me,” she says. “I was speaking more to how this unspecified change has led to my disgusting you.” Thranduil wants to argue, but there is something holding him back. This is not like any other time he tried to push her away. Now, he is doing it for a higher cause.

“I need time,” he says weakly, looking anywhere but at her face. “Time to discover if this path is truly one I desire to take. You cannot deny me that,” he says with sudden fierceness. The fury in her eyes is only a mask over her injured heart, and he cannot bear it. “You cannot deny me this. I gave you time.”

“Indeed you did,” Tauriel replies calmly, and he shivers in the wake of the silky, deadly serenity to her voice. “I cannot deny you that.” With that same icy steadiness, she puts her boots back on. “I’ll be gone by dawn.” Thranduil feels his mouth fall open.

“Gone?” he inquires in astonishment. “Tauriel, no. I did not mean for you to leave.” She laughs, and it is a horrible sound.

“Did you not?” she asks. “But the result is the same. You need time, and I need to decide if I can be with someone whose heart is so inconstant.”

Stung, Thranduil sinks back onto the chair behind him. “Where will you go?” he asks slowly, and Tauriel shrugs.

“I do not know. North. Angmar, perhaps.” The world seems to fall away from Thranduil all in a rush, and the blood roars in his ears. He cannot believe the words he has heard.

“You cannot. You must not, Tauriel.” It is the wrong thing to say; born of his sudden panic and concern, it emerges from his mouth with sharpness and cruelty. Both the wrong thing to say, and the wrong way to say it. Tauriel’s lips flatten to a thin line.

“I will do as I see fit,” she replies, her voice the hiss of the belly scales of a snake over stone. “And you never know what alchemy may occur, if I stand on the soil of that accursed land. Perhaps I will be devoured and your queen be returned to you, and everything will be exactly as you have always wanted.”

“You are overreacting,” Thranduil informs her quietly, and Tauriel’s eyebrows snap together harshly.

“Pots and kettles, my lord,” she replies, and slams the door behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to all about how bloody long this chapter has taken. Work's been crazy busy but that's no excuse. Anyway, I have a few ideas for the next two or three chapters bouncing around my brain, so hopefully it won't take as long for the next one.


	12. When Winter Comes, And Darkness Falls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel leaves the halls of the Elven King to make amends, and contemplates the path that has brought her to this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've heard a bit about how unfair Tauriel was to Thranduil, and at first I didn’t agree. I (ever a vain creature) took it as a criticism on my writing, which (after half a block of Kit Kat) I decided was wrong. Chocolate always makes me see sense. Yes, Tauriel was harsh, but she had her reasons, hence this chapter. I would advise anyone who thinks this chapter is trying to validate Tauriel’s actions to go read the previous one very thoroughly, and also to take into consideration that I am writing a story about two people, who despite being gorgeous elves have bad days and good days. I take all comments into consideration when I write, but I do hope I haven’t lost some of you lovely people just because you didn’t like one part of the saga this story is turning into.
> 
> All right, that’s enough. Let’s get the hell on with the chapter.

Tauriel knows she was in the wrong even as she rides away the next morning. Usually to go through the Greenwood she goes by foot, but there is too much chance the king _(she will not think his name)_ will call her back. Not for any tender reason of the heart, she is sure, but not for nothing are the vagaries of his mood feared throughout his realm. So she takes a horse, one of Legolas’ old favourites if she recalls correctly, and rides away before the dawn.

But she does not leave empty handed.

After she storms from the king’s chambers, she wrenches her practise sword from its place in her rooms and performs drills until her arm is weak and shaking and all trace of inebriation has flowed from her body. Then, she cringes at the things she had said. His wife, by all that is holy. She had insulted his wife.

Yet there is ever one small, barely audible voice that she can hear, as though a small demon perches on her shoulder. _You know you would not have been so easy to anger had it not been today he chose to have his crisis on,_ the little voice whispers, sounding treacherously like her own. _Today, of all days. Had he not been so self-absorbed, he might have known that. And you might not have spent so long in your cups had it been just another day._

She wishes to clap her hands over her ears to silence the doubts, but that would not help. She sits in the guards’ courtyard for a long time, pondering the path that has brought her here. For a moment, one foolish moment, she wishes she could talk to Kíli. Kíli always seemed to make things clearer. But then, if Kíli had survived, she never would have fallen in with the Elven King. The sharp sting of the grief runs through her again. And when the tears come, in the dead of night, she does not weep only herself or the dead dwarf ensconced in his granite tomb, but for the wounds she has caused this night in another, and the foolishness of her heart.

And for the loss, far more ancient but by no means less painful because of it, that she had borne this day, six hundred years ago. She can still remember it like it was yesterday, travelling on a dusty road, her parents on horseback and Tauriel on her first pony.

_Oh, the reins were firmly clenched in her mother’s hands, but what did that matter? Ada was smiling in his quiet way and Naneth was telling him exactly what to do when they reached the next town, but years later Tauriel would not recall the words. Only her mother’s careless smile and the silent joy in her father’s eyes, and how she would long to take that moment and put it in amber, to keep it safe and sacred from the carnage that followed._

_There had been silence for a moment when Naneth drew breath to continue, but there was never another word from her throat. Never another breath from the voice that had bartered and argued with Men in their villages, had pointed out their next destination on maps, had sang Tauriel to sleep in the cool shadows of the evening._

_A black shafted arrow had whipped through the air and buried itself in Naneth’s throat, and for a moment Tauriel could only stare in astonishment, before the horror kicked in. She had started to scream and Ada was screaming too, fumbling at his side for his sword – “You’re hopeless with a blade, husband, really,” Naneth often said fondly with a kiss on her husband’s lips – but he didn’t even have it unsheathed before an orc had appeared from nowhere and stabbed Ada’s mare in the side. The poor horse had collapsed, whinnying in pain, and Ada had crumpled to the ground. The orc had raised his hideous sword and then. And then. There had been no more Ada. Just a bloody thing on the ground with Tauriel’s red hair._

_There were orcs everywhere. Ten, twenty, Tauriel couldn’t tell. She couldn’t get away. Naneth still held her pony’s reins in a death grip and Tauriel had slid down from the saddle, but suddenly the orcs were so tall, and one of them had licked his lips and said, “What about the runt?” and then –_

Tauriel cradles her head in her hands, well aware the inhuman moaning noise is coming from her own throat, and draws her knees up to her chest. Six hundred years, and there is no healing to that wound. At least, not on this day, the anniversary of her parents’ deaths.

When she can stand again, she knows what she must do. She has offended the king unforgivably, and any hope of something beyond mere civility between them is now gone, but Tauriel knows the path ahead of her. There is something lost that must be found. She had hoped the White Gems and the necklace would have been enough, but there is something far more precious that lies where it should not. And Tauriel is going to find it.

She prepares all she needs for the venture, but there are three more things that cannot be found anywhere but the king’s chambers. She knows the way to his rooms so well by now, and she is counting on his previous agitation being so encompassing that he did not think to lock the door after she left. Her palms are sweating and her heart is thumping so loud she is sure all of Mirkwood can hear it, but her feet are as stealthy as ever as she opens the door.

There. The box containing the White Gems is sitting in his study. With infinite stealth, Tauriel moves towards it and flicks up the lid. She cannot take the necklace, and she is regretful about it, because the necklace would have made the task ahead infinitely easier. But it would be noticed very quickly, she is aware, and so she takes one single gem, hoping it is enough. The other two are not so easy, but Tauriel knows where to find them. In the sitting room there is one loose floorboard, and underneath it is a small chest. Not large enough to hold anything a passing stranger would consider valuable, and yet Tauriel knows that to the king the contents of that chest are worth far more than gold or jewels.

She stares down into the little chest, and her heart swells. The contents might appear prosaic to some: letters so old they are beginning to crumble, a tarnished locket, and a neatly folded dress of robin’s egg blue which seems to fade even as Tauriel looks at it.

She longs to know the contents of those letters, but she has no time and less desire to invade the Elven King’s privacy. So she draws out her smallest knife and cuts a piece from the dress, and uses the same knife to lever open the locket. There is a curl of golden hair inside, not the white blonde of Legolas and the king but more a gilded, honey shade. Tauriel takes three stands of the hair and folds it with infinite care into a white handkerchief with the gem and the square of fabric. Thus armed against the concept of failure in pursuit of her task, Tauriel replaces everything as she found it, and stands to leave. Yet she cannot go without one last glance.

She kneels beside his bed. He is asleep. Tauriel touches his hair for luck, just one last time, and curses her foolishness when the king’s eyes open. Unfocused in the dark, she sees him squint, and a lazy smile comes over his face. Tears brim in Tauriel’s eyes but she does not let them fall. He is the loveliest thing she can ever recall seeing.

“Tauriel?” Thranduil asks sleepily. “You’ve come back.” He lifts the blankets on the side of the bed in a universally recognised gesture for come, get into bed. And for a moment, Tauriel considers how easy it would be. To slip in beside him, to perhaps make love; it would be the easiest thing in the world. At least until the next argument. Until the next time he is haughty and she is stubborn. When a single word is enough to be the flint between them and spark fire.

She needs to do this. She needs to make amends. And she needs to lay some ghosts to rest.

“No,” she replies, and leans down to kiss him lightly on the forehead. “I’ve not come back. You are dreaming, Thranduil.” And quietly, she makes her way to the door, and shuts it gently behind her.

 

Her eyes are stinging in the early morning light and winter chill. Deep in her pocket the stolen items seem to burn, and yet is it stealing, when her cause is just and her intentions are pure? She does not know. But she knows where to begin her search. She has an old friend with unusual powers, after all.

For several days she rides. She does not rush, for to accidently injure or even kill the mare would be her undoing in these times. Still orcs crawl these lands around Mirkwood, even though the Necromancer has been driven from Dol Guldur and the host commanded by Azog the Defiler has been destroyed. She sees two packs big enough to give her trouble, and with her usual calmness picks them off one by one from a distance. She has brought enough arrows to slay a dozen orc packs, and none among them can match her skill with a bow.

She arrives in at the borders of southern Mirkwood some ten days after she left the king’s halls. This part of the forest is far outside the borders of the Elven King’s lands, and she feels a degree of safety here. The trees are further apart and more sunlight penetrates through the leaves than in the north of the forest. The air here is not so thick, either.

She makes her way to the strange little house from memory, and bangs on the door. There is no answer. She did not really expect there to be one. So she tethers her horse, feeds and waters her and combs her out from the long ride, and settles in to wait in the cold winter sunshine. She does not feel the chill, not truly. There is an icier ache closer to her bones.

The wizard returns to his home only hours before darkness falls. Tauriel has been waiting for him, her twin swords by her side just in case enemies come. But she hears the wizard before she sees him, as he hums to himself. She cannot help a smile. He has not changed in the least.

“Good afternoon,” she calls, wishing to announce herself, and the humming stops. The wizard appears from behind a tree, squints hard, and for a moment looks completely lost. Then recognition lights up his face and he steps forward eagerly.

“Not young Tauriel!” he exclaims, lifting his hat to let a bird settle in the mess of his hair. “All grown up!”

“Hello, Radagast,” she says shyly, stooping a little to kiss the wizard on the cheek, and allows herself to remember the last time she had seen him.

_She was in the orcs’ camp. They had left Ada and Naneth on the ground and taken Naneth’s horse and Tauriel’s pony. The first night, they had eaten Glosroch, Naneth’s gelding, and the night after they had eaten Spot, Tauriel’s pony, which she had named in Westron because they had bought him in a village of Men. But Spot’s name hadn’t mattered when the orcs had torn him apart and roasted him over a fire._

_Tauriel had not known how much time had passed beyond those first two nights and the night the wizard found her, but in later years she would estimate it to be almost a fortnight. In that time the orcs had killed two of their number over whether to eat her or not. Their leader, Gogron, wanted to keep her as a form of pet, but Tauriel had bitten anyone who came close to her. Any hope of rescue had faded into a dull form of acceptance. Naneth and Ada were dead. Now, all she wanted was to be with them._

_She had been huddling in the small, crude cage they had roughly built for her. The orcs were laughing and singing songs and devouring the mutton they had stolen for dinner. Tauriel did not know how far they had taken her away from her family. She was bruised and wounded from where Gogron had pinched and poked her to make the others laugh, and hungrier than she had ever been before. The orcs did not think to feed the pet._

_They had been laughing and speaking in their horrible tongue when the wizard had arrived._

_“You are all making a dreadful noise,” a voice had said lightly, and the orcs had turned snarling and snapping to the stranger. He was not a tall man, Tauriel had seen, and he was a strange one, and yet she had marvelled at how he did not falter in the face of the monsters that had been keeping her captive for what felt like forever. “And what’s that you’ve got there in that cage? An elven child? Now, what are a dozen orcs doing with an elf babe?”_

_The orcs had roared and light had flashed, and Tauriel had hidden her face. The next thing she had known, there had been a curious smell like earth and growing things, so alien amongst the filth of the orcs, and she had been lifted into warm arms. And when she had looked around, she had seen that the orcs were all still and silent, crumpled on the ground, her cage broken and rent, and a small dark part of her heart rejoiced._

_“What is your name, little one?” the stranger had asked, and Tauriel had shook her head. Do not tell strangers your name or where you are from, Naneth had told her countless times, and Tauriel was a good girl. She did not disobey Naneth. “Come now, child. I will not harm you.” Tauriel closed her eyes._

_“What are you?” she had whispered to him. Naneth had not said she could not ask strangers their names, and the stranger had chuckled._

_“I am a wizard, little elf girl. Radagast the Brown, to be exact.” Tauriel had opened her eyes. Naneth had told her tales of wizards, how they were good and kind, and did not harm little children._

_“Tauriel,” she had told him, and the wizard had touched her gently on the brow._

_“Daughter of the forest, eh? A stroke of luck I found you, then. Now tell me, forest-daughter, where are your family?” She had started to cry then, and the jolly expression had fallen away from the wizard’s face. “Did the orcs kill them, child?” he had asked, and Tauriel had nodded against the brown cloth of his robe. “Oh dear. Oh dear, dear.” She had peeked up and seen the wizard’s face full of sorrow. “Well, then. I’d better take you to the king, then.” He starts to walk, and Tauriel shifts in his arms to peer up at him._

_“King?”_

_“The King of the Wood Elves,” Radagast had told her. “You are near the borders of the Greenwood, little one, and he is the king of those lands.”_

“What brings you to my woods?” Radagast asks later, when he has served her tea and a meal filled with rather curious ingredients. “The last I heard, you were in service to the Elven King.” Tauriel cannot hide a wince, and Radagast lifts a curious eyebrow. “There is a tale in the telling,” he observes, puffing on his pipe. Tauriel shrugs.

“No tale, my friend. Only I have offended him beyond the grounds of what a simple apology can convey, and I require your assistance.” She looks down for a moment. “If you are kind enough to give it,” she adds, and Radagast gives her a fatherly pat on the hand.

“What do you need?” he asks simply, and Tauriel marvels that there are such people in the world that are so quick to help others. It does not occur to her that she herself falls into such a category. Tauriel outlines her plan, shows him the objects she has brought, and Radagast tilts his head thoughtfully, blowing a smoke ring at the ceiling. “I do not know if I can assist you to find what you seek,” he says, and Tauriel feels her heart sink in disappointment. “But if you can tarry here but a few days, I believe I can summon one who can.”

“Truly?” Tauriel asks, barely daring to hope. “You have done so much for me already, sir. I could not ask for you to do more. You saved my life.”

“And the trees inform me you have been a careful and rigorous guard of this forest, slaying again and again those foul spiders that have defiled this place I hold so dear,” Radagast replies, rising to pour them both another cup of tea. “You cut no branches, you injure no small burrowing thing or gentle, noble deer. You have repaid my small act with a thousand great ones, forest-daughter, and it would be my honour to assist you.”

Tauriel feels the familiar stinging in her eyes again. “I am so quick to weep of late,” she says thickly, and Radagast pats her shoulder gently, handing her a handkerchief of somewhat questionable cleanliness. She uses it to dab her eyes anyway.

“You require rest,” Radagast tells her. “Sleep out amongst the trees and the birds, and feel the stars on your skin. No harm will come to you.”

“Except perhaps the winter cold,” she teases him lightly, and Radagast harrumphs and passes her a heavy blanket.

“I am a wizard, you know,” he informs her with some dignity. “If I wish you to not be cold, it can be so.”

Tauriel just bows her head, and bids him a good night as she leaves. Radagast is already building up the fire, setting a number of bizarre objects out on the table.

(Strange chanting makes its way into her dreams.)

 

Tauriel spends a week amongst the winter beauty of southern Mirkwood before Radagast’s associate arrives. In that time she gives plenty of thought to whom the unknown individual might be, but Radagast does not say, and so she does not ask. Tauriel has spent enough time amongst Men to have heard the saying about looking gift horses in the mouth.

However, the moment she sees who has come, she wishes only for a moment she had set out on this quest on her own. When she wakes on the morning of the eighth day and wanders towards the source of the voices she can hear, there are two wizards puffing on pipes outside Radagast’s little hut. One is clad in brown and one is clad in grey, with a great pointy hat on the top of his head.

“And here is my guest!” Radagast says happily when he sees her. “Tauriel, dear girl, I don’t believe you know my friend, Gandalf.”

“Gandalf the Grey,” rumbles the grey wizard. Tauriel inclines her head.

“You are known as Mithrandir among my people, I believe,” she says, and both wizards nod. “I have heard of you from the tales of my kin, although I do not believe I have had the honour of meeting you in person.” It is at moments like this that she is grateful for the king’s rigorous training in the appropriate way to speak to emissaries to his kingdom. Some hundred years prior, when she had taken on the role of guard captain, he had tutored her himself.

The king. _Thranduil_. Her chest constricts like her heart itself is trying to tear its way free of her ribs, and she pushes the memories away. The grey wizard, Mithrandir, is eyeing her with something like respect combined with suspicion.

“You are correct,” he replies. “I have many names amongst the peoples of Middle Earth.” He puffs on his pipe and pats the log beside him. Tauriel sits, every nerve on edge. “Radagast has told me you require some assistance.”

“He is correct,” she replies, shooting Radagast a quick, thankful smile. “I need to find something that has been lost.” Mithrandir blows a smoke ring and looks at her out the corner of his eye; his blue gaze is deceptively light, but for a moment Tauriel feels as though there are needles raking through her brain. Perhaps the pain is merely the harsh morning light combined with the winter air and a poor night’s sleep, but Tauriel has heard strange tales of this grey wizard, this Mithrandir. Whatever the case, she straightens her back and meets his gaze head on. She is no one to bend to this wizard. And isn’t it odd, that she is starting to sound like the king even in her own mind? A grim smile tugs at her lips.

“Was is it you seek, my dear?” Mithrandir asks, and Tauriel hesitates. For all his wisdom she does not entirely trust him, and though his eyes are clear and honest, she senses the capacity for untold calculation beneath the benevolent surface. Yet two wizards is better than one, she thinks with a tinge of delirious hope, and opens her mouth to speak.

“Bones.”


	13. Of Sorrow and of Ruin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thranduil is clueless. Tauriel returns to the Woodland Realm, with something long lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the wait. We seem to be getting towards the end of this story, but the tale of Thranduil and Tauriel is nowhere near done. This is a story about grief and healing; once the grief is over, it'll be time for a new story.

Tauriel does not return for what seems a very long time. In truth, Thranduil knows, she has not been gone more than a month when the first news of her comes to his ears. She has been seen riding with two Men. At least, it is believed the two are Men, until one of the travellers casually reveals that the taller of the two wears grey with a large, pointed hat. That sheds some light on one of Tauriel’s travelling companions, but not the other.

 _Perhaps she has taken another lover already,_ a small voice whispers to him. Mithrandir seems a bit of a stretch, true, but perhaps the other has already been invited into her bed. Or bedroll, as it is, considering she is travelling.

Thranduil swallows his pride on the thirtieth day. He attends dawn guard practise, stands with a crumpled-looking but bright eyed Lainor, who excitedly outlines his ideas for improving the guard. Usually, Thranduil would have devoted his full attention to the young guard captain, but not today.

“I understand your former leader has vanished,” he says abruptly, interrupting the other elf in mid-sentence. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?” Thranduil turns his head away, ostensibly to peer at a pair of practising guards, but he can still feel Lainor’s curious gaze on his skin.

“She may have taken to the woods, my king,” Lainor ventures carefully, and with equal care Thranduil turns his head back to return Lainor’s gaze. “She often seeks the solace of the forest at this time of year, and such an anniversary it was, as well.” Thranduil has no idea what the younger elf is taking about, and says as much. Lainor takes a moment to bellow an order at a junior guardsman, before seeming to remember he is in the presence of his king. “Forgive me, sire. I only meant that it was the six hundredth anniversary of her parents’ death only one moon past. The day before she left, I believe. If you’ll excuse me, sire.” Thranduil nods, and the other elf takes his leave, striding towards a group of sparring guards. “Faelon! That’s a sword you’re handling, by Eru, not a dwarf lurching about with an axe!”

Thranduil hardly hears any more. He is rooted to the ground with horror. Her _parents_. How could he have not known? But that is incorrect. How could he have forgotten? He has known Tauriel for so long, ever since the brown wizard brought her to his halls when she was barely a decade old. Her mother and father dead, she had been bruised and scratched where orcs had taunted her, and a ferocious rage had risen up in his chest.

_“What is the meaning of this?” Thranduil demands. Two of his guards flank Radagast the Brown, who holds a small child to his chest. “Why have you come here?”_

_The wizard raises his gaze from the child’s face to look Thranduil in the eye, and the king shivers. Not for nothing is Radagast the Brown a member of the Istari, for all he does not look it. “I found this wee one beset by orcs,” replies the wizard. “Her parents were Silvan elves. Where else could I have brought her?”_

_“I will be the judge of that,” Thranduil says decidedly. “You. Child.”_

_“She’s a girl,” Radagast says helpfully, and Thranduil shoots him a glare._

_“Very well, then. Girl child. Look at me.”_

_“Don’t wanna,” issues a petulant voice from the front of Radagast’s tunic. Thranduil feels a headache begin in his temples._

_“Now, now, forest-daughter,” the wizard coaxes. “Do as you’re bid.”_

_“Don’t want to meet king,” the child replies, her voice muffled. “Naneth says king is vain and foolish.” Thranduil stiffens and glares at Radagast when the wizard makes a sound very like a snort._

_“And who is your Naneth?” Thranduil asks tartly. The stubborn little child looks up at that, and a fist seems to close around Thranduil’s heart. The girl is redheaded and green-eyed, her little chin and mouth as stubborn as he knows her mother’s to be. Had been. She has the look of both her parents._

_“Orcs killed her mother and father,” Radagast supplies. “I found her in a cage.” Rage whites out Thranduil’s vision for a moment._

_“In a cage,” he says slowly, and has to force his hands not to reach out for his sword hilt. “You found an elven child in a cage.”_

_“Aye,” the wizard replies, and a glance is exchanged between the king and the small man in stained and crumpled brown._

_“You dealt with the orcs, I trust?” Thranduil asks crisply, and Radagast nods, setting the girl child down on her feet. Thranduil descends from his throne and takes a knee in front of her._

_“I knew your mother and father, Tauriel,” he informs her, and the child looks up at him. She is an inch from tears and Thranduil hardly blames her. She is only a decade old; by mortal standards she is equivalent to a four year old child of Men. Yet there is a terrible weariness in her small face. “This will have to be your home now.” Thranduil holds out a hand to the girl, feeling a terrible rustiness in his bones at the thought of raising a child (at his age!). Shyly, as though attempting to gauge his measure, Tauriel takes his hand, and squeezes tight._

In the end, he had not needed to raise her. She had been fostered in a series of elven families until she reached her hundredth year. Then, she had flatly refused to be dependent on anyone anymore, and had joined the palace guard. One hundred was very young by elven standards to join the guard, but no one could deny her talent.

And then, Thranduil thinks, watching the sparring guards with only half an eye and even less brain, she had run away to see the world, and taken a part of him with her.

It is hardly fair.

But he is accustomed to that.

 

Tauriel returns when Thranduil least expects her. She comes through one of the minor gates, one big enough to allow entrance for the three horses she has acquired. Thranduil hears of it at the evening meal. There is a flurry of excitement at the guards’ table and next thing anyone knows, the whole flock of them is on their feet and heading out.

“What is the matter?” Thranduil asks his head of household some hours later. “With the guards, earlier this evening.” Camaenor tuts; Thranduil eyes him with a hint of amusement. Camaenor knows everything there is to know about the Woodland Realm and its king, or so the other elf likes to believe; it amuses Thranduil that the only thing that Camaenor does not know is his king’s affair with a Silvan.

“One of the old guard captains,” Camaenor says dismissively. Thranduil does not even think of Tauriel, for how far she feels from him.

“Saeledhel?” Thranduil asks. “I was not aware he was travelling, what with his daughter’s confinement.” Camaenor harrumphs; it is not a very elf-like noise, but Thranduil will not tell him that.

“Not Saeledhel,” the other elf replies pompously. “The female.” Camaenor twists his mouth in dislike; he might be millennia younger than Thranduil, but Camaenor is defiantly old-fashioned. Not that Thranduil notices, of course; his heart may have stopped.

 

She is waiting in the throne room on her knees with a wrapped bundle beside her. Thranduil sweeps in and stops when he sees her; he does not bother to ascend to his throne. Rather, he stands over Tauriel and notes the stress in her shoulders, the tension writ heavy on her brow.

“If you are concerned I harbour a grudge over your behaviour when you were last in my halls,” he begins, but he does not finish. Tauriel raises her head, and such is the torment in her eyes that words fail him.

“I am not here for my own sake,” she says, and Thranduil thrills just a little to the sound of her voice. “I bring something that has too long been lost.” She lowers her head once more, and Thranduil has to lean down a little to fully make out her words. “I will go, once my debt is paid,” she says softly, and with one hand she opens the bundle.

Thranduil stares, and then stares some more. “You’ve brought me a corpse?” he asks, but that is not true. The term corpse implies at least some flesh left on the bones; this one has been picked clean, whether by scavengers or time. Tauriel’s eyes are haunted when she darts a glance up at him.

“Do you not see?” she asks, her voice hoarse and cracked as though with long screaming. “It’s your wife.”

Time stops, and then Thranduil sees. He sees the gilded hair and full cheeks and soft mouth superimposed over the grinning skull. He sees eyes in the empty sockets and the noise that is torn from his throat is not like any he has ever heard himself make before. Because Tauriel has found his wife, his precious beloved queen, has found her in the filth of Angmar and brought her home to him.

The pressure in his chest is so great he feels as though his heart may burst.

“Oh, Tauriel,” Thranduil exclaims, and falls to his knees beside his lover and his wife. He is weeping and for once he does not care, smoothing a hand over the weathered skull, touching the other to one bony finger. “What have you done?” But it is not a cry of anger or hatred. He can simply not believe what he is seeing. “How?”

“Mithrandir,” Tauriel replies, and she too is weeping. “I took one of the White Gems and three strands of her hair, and he created a spell to locate her bones.”

“She has no bones,” Thranduil replies, longing more than anything to gather up the bones of his lost love in his arms. Longing more than anything, and yet he cannot imagine anything more grotesque. Denial is his own weapon against this newfound torture. “She was destroyed.” Tauriel is shaking her head.

“She was in a mass grave,” she replies, and her face is white to the lips. “Oh, Thranduil. I cannot speak of what I saw there in Angmar. The very air chokes the lungs.” But Thranduil is not paying attention.

“How?” he asks, not daring to hope. “How can you know it is her?” Tauriel wipes her hand roughly over her eyes, and points.

“There,” she says, and shows him where one of the bones look different to the others. “Legolas says she broke her leg a year before she died. Human bone heals quicker than ours. She might have had full functionality, but it was still healing under her skin.”

“I should never have let her go,” Thranduil says softly, and Tauriel presses her forehead against his shoulder in a mute gesture of solidarity.

“From what Legolas has told me of her, I do not believe she would have consented to remain behind.” Tauriel hesitates a moment. “She was entombed with many orcs.” Thranduil’s heart seems to sink into her boots, and through the haze of his own tears he sees Tauriel’s face crumple. “I had to pick her bones out from amongst theirs,” she murmurs, and Thranduil’s free hand tightens on something soft and warm. Tauriel’s face tightens and Thranduil realises he is holding her hand, crushing it in his grip, although which of them reached for the other he cannot tell. “She was still wearing her mail,” Tauriel continues, as though each word is causing her immense pain. “I brought it back with me.” but Thranduil is lost on another track of thought.

“In a mass grave… with orcs,” he says; he cannot comprehend the words. His pure love, entombed for a millennia with the vilest creatures to ever walk the earth. It is a violation of all that is good and right in the world.

“It must have been just after Angmar fell,” Tauriel says, and Thranduil forces himself to absorb each word. “The survivors of the orc army buried their dead as quickly as possible, those they didn’t burn. It seems she just… was thrown in there with them.” Thranduil chokes back a sob. This is too much, too much to bear. “I’m sorry,” Tauriel is saying, and Thranduil looks up to see tears running down her face. “But she deserved to come home.”

“You are right,” Thranduil replies thickly, the pair of them on the floor of his throne room weeping like children, and he cannot bring himself to have a problem with it. “I can never repay you,” he says, but Tauriel shakes her head.

“There is no need,” she mutters, wiping a hand over her eyes. “But do me this kindness. Bury her in the forest, where the trees let the sun through to the earth. Do no entomb her in darkness and in depth.”

“Of course,” Thranduil replies, and takes his lover in his arms by the bones of his wife, and for the first time in a millennia feels free.


	14. Hope Unlooked For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another journey.

“Stop pouting,” Tauriel says, shadowing her eyes with a hand against the early morning light. Her companion grumbles and strokes his horse’s mane. It is not the poor beast’s fault she has bewitched him into this, after all.

“Do you know how long it’s been since I rode a horse?” Thranduil demands. Tauriel just shrugs as she checks the stirrups and then swings up into the saddle. Thranduil privately thinks she looks like some warrior goddess of Men astride her steed, her hair a fiery halo around her head and her usual hunter’s greens swapped for light mail. (Thranduil had insisted; those thin hunter’s garments offer almost no protection at all, and he can’t have that.)

“We can’t all ride giant elks everywhere,” Tauriel replies with some patience, and Thranduil smirks as he murmurs to his horse. “You promised to at least try this, remember?”

“If I recall correctly,” the king retorts, “I agreed to try this. I did not state I would do it uncomplainingly.” He peers out the corner of his eye and sees his former guard captain raise her eyes to the sky in a mute appeal for patience.

“It’s going to be a long journey, isn’t it,” she says to no one in particular, and at that Thranduil lets her _see_ his smirk.

“I never promised anything otherwise, my dear. And you know you have no one to blame but yourself.”

They’d buried his wife one cool morning when the wind was gentle and the sun shone even against the coolness. Thranduil had been surprised at all who had appeared in the days before the funeral (which despite his desire for privacy had been a state affair). Galadriel and Celeborn, Bard of the rebuilding kingdom of Dale and his tall, slim daughter who ran his household, even a politely worded note from Balin of Erebor that has been (grudgingly, Thranduil imagines) stamped with Ironfoot’s seal. Elrond, although Tauriel had teased Thranduil for sulking about it, and his daughter Arwen, whose beauty is such that even Thranduil caught his breath when he first saw her.

But beauty for him will be forever and indelibly entwined with his wife, and when Legolas arrives one evening out of the blue in the dining hall, it is all Thranduil can do to not leap out of his seat and embrace his son. He does not, however, show the same restraint later after his son had viewed the bones of his mother. The sight of his child, cheeks wet with tears, was more than he could bear.

As she is gently lowered into the ground, Thranduil seeks out a head of red hair standing amongst the rank of sober guards. She is staring resolutely at the ground, wearing a similar stoic expression to her former fellows, but as if sensing his gaze, she glances up at him and smiles.

It is in that moment Thranduil decides it is time.

In the following days he makes quiet preparations to leave his halls. He leaves them in the more than capable hands of Camaenor, with a small contingent of counsellors to keep an eye on the higher matters of state. He has buried his wife, after all. It is time he stops living as one entombed.

Tauriel neither shrieks nor shouts when he tells her. Merely arches an eyebrow as if to say, about time, and he loves her for that.

“Where do you want to go first?” Tauriel asks, as if they haven’t spent evenings discussing their course, but Thranduil does not mind. He mounts up and brings his horse up to alongside hers. They are at one of the smaller gates to his kingdom, one that faces what used to be Laketown rather than one that leads through the forest. It is not so easy to take horses through Mirkwood, at least not these days. Yet more and more the Mirkwood is becoming the Greenwood Thranduil remembers of old, now that the pervasive presence of the Necromancer has been banished.

“I do not know,” Thranduil replies. “You must be my guide.” But Tauriel shakes her head.

“No more guiding, Thranduil,” she says. “It’s time for you to learn your own way.” Even the thought alone has him sweating. He has been a creature of duty for so long, it seems impossible to simply choose a course for the sake of it, without weighing up every option and path obsessively. To do what he wants, whatever that may be, rather than to do what he ought. He still remembers Tauriel’s words on the subject: _“You are a king, not a prisoner,” she had said. “There is no rule that you must stay here all of your days.”_

_“And what if I am killed?” he had asked her, and had been surprised by her shrug._

_“Then Legolas will be a wise and capable king, and life will go on,” she had informed him. “You are not the centre of the universe, Thranduil.”_ Far from being insulting, the words had been freeing. He is not, after all, the only person to have ever ruled his kingdom, and he will not be the last.

“We will go to Dale,” he says decisively. “I would like to view the rebuilding.” Tauriel does not argue.

“Very well,” she replies, but something in her voice has him turning to her.

“You will come with me?” he asks, wishing it had sounded more like an order and less like a question, but Tauriel does not seem to mind. Far from it; she is smiling.

“Where else would I be?” she asks, and together they ride out into the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have come to the end of this fic. Thank you immensely to all of you who have read, commented, bookmarked, and kudosed this work. I can honestly say I've never had such an amazing reaction to anything I've written before; you guys are epic.
> 
> There will be a sequel to this fic in the coming weeks, hopefully more cheerful than this one has been, dealing with Tauriel and Thranduil's relationship in later years and during the War of the Ring.


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